D.D.C. No. 24-cv-02523Confirmed
A federal judge in Washington threw the case out in September 2025 — not on its merits, but because the lawsuit papers had never been validly delivered. On 23 July 2026 he undid that dismissal, giving the Jehovah's Witnesses' Pennsylvania corporation 180 days to serve the Russian Federation, its health ministry and the state institute now using the site, this time through diplomatic channels. Documents filed with the complaint valued the property at more than $30 million. As of that opinion the court had decided nothing about whether a U.S. court can hear the claim at all.
· July 23, 2026 · 9 min read
UN Working Group on Arbitrary DetentionConfirmed
Opinion No. 30/2026 finds the detentions arbitrary under categories I, II and V and recommends release plus compensation. Russia responded nine days after the deadline, citing the extremism designation; the panel could not accept the reply as timely. The opinion is not binding, and the Working Group made no finding of torture or unfair trial.
· March 30, 2026 · 10 min read
RussiaConfirmed
The Committee's 13 March 2026 ruling found unlawful arrest, religious discrimination and denial of minority rights in a 2018 Ufa case, and ordered unspecified compensation. It also dismissed several claims, refused an earlier emergency request, and has no power to enforce anything.
· March 13, 2026 · 12 min read
PersecutionConfirmed
By mid-2018 the 2017 "extremist" ban had become a countrywide campaign of home raids and prosecutions — dozens charged across more than a dozen regions, with masked officers and pre-trial detention.
· June 28, 2018 · 2 min read
PropertyConfirmed
In December 2017 a St. Petersburg court cleared the way for the state to take the Witnesses' former national headquarters — a 14-building complex owned by a U.S. entity — as fallout from the 2017 ban.
· December 7, 2017 · 1 min read
ExtremismConfirmed
In March 2016 the Prosecutor General's office told the Witnesses' Russian headquarters it faced dissolution for "extremist activity," and a Moscow court rejected the appeal that autumn — the paper trail to the 2017 ban.
· March 2, 2016 · 2 min read
CensorshipConfirmed
In 2017 a Russian court declared the Witnesses' New World Translation "extremist" — sidestepping a law that protects scripture by accepting expert testimony that the translation was not really a Bible.
· August 17, 2017 · 5 min read
CensorshipConfirmed
A Ministry of Justice listing in July 2015 made Russia the only country to ban jw.org — the end of a two-year court fight, and a step toward the nationwide ban that followed in 2017.
· July 21, 2015 · 2 min read
Religious freedomConfirmed
A 2017 Supreme Court ruling outlawed the organization nationwide, liquidated 395 local entities, and seized property — without a single finding of violence. Europe's top human-rights court later called the whole campaign unlawful, but Russia, by then out of the Council of Europe, refused to comply.
· April 20, 2017 · 12 min read