Preacher Khristolyub Vegan died in a Voronezh penal colony

Preacher Khristolyub Vegan died in a Voronezh penal colony

Preacher and blogger Khristolyub Vegan, who had been convicted over videos on YouTube, died in Penal Colony No. 2. His father told OVD-Info about this.

Today, an officer from the Federal Penitentiary Service called the man and informed him of Khristolyub’s death. The officer asked the father to come on Monday, April 20, to collect his son’s body. At the same time, he refused to state the cause and circumstances of Khristolyub’s death.

🟧 The preacher had been in Penal Colony No. 2 since January. He was transferred there from an open prison after a court decision to toughen the regime. In Penal Colony No. 2, Khristolyub was held under strict conditions of detention.

🟧 Khristolyub’s father says his son had not complained of health problems. They last spoke by phone several days ago.

🟧 In open prison No. 10, where he was held until January, Khristolyub was sent to the punishment unit under various pretexts from the very first days.

“As soon as I came in, they immediately gave me 5 days in the SHIZO. And just now, another 15. For absolutely nothing, just like that. I agreed to everything and did not object to anything. And they still gave me 5, and starting today, another 15 days sitting there without getting out at all. Because I supposedly didn’t keep my back straight at some point,” he said.

🟧 Khristolyub feared that they were planning to “rot him away” in the colony.

🟧 Under the court sentence, he was supposed to report to the open prison on his own on October 13, 2025. Instead, however, the preacher held an anti-war picket that day. After the action, he was detained and arrested for forced escort to the place where he was to serve his sentence.

The persecution of Khristolyub Vegan

In February 2025, Khristolyub was sentenced to 3 years in an open prison on charges of insulting the feelings of believers and rehabilitating Nazism.

The first article was imputed to him over a video with crude statements about Islam.

The charge of rehabilitating Nazism was brought over statements about the recruitment of prisoners to be sent to the war in Ukraine, about the glorification of Soviet soldiers, and about their crimes against civilians.

Khristolyub also posted videos on his YouTube channel condemning the war in Ukraine and criticizing the Russian authorities and Vladimir Putin. In his final statement, the preacher noted that for three years he had “used all his resources, strength, means, and opportunities to stop the Rashist-Ukrainian war.”

Khristolyub Vegan / Photo: Yevgeny Kurakin for OVD-Info