OCCUPIED UKRAINE: Protestant woman on trial for Melitopol prayer meeting?

In early 2024, Russian occupation forces arrested a Protestant in her fifties for participating in a July 2023 prayer meeting in the occupied Ukrainian city of Melitopol. Prosecutors handed her criminal case to Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia Regional Court. In the same court is the criminal case against Ukrainian Orthodox Church priest Kostiantyn Maksimov for alleged “espionage”. On 27 April, Krasnodon’s Russian-controlled court fined Pastor Vladimir Rytikov 5,000 Russian Roubles on charges of “illegal missionary activity” for leading his unregistered Baptist congregation. “This is half my [monthly] pension,” he noted.