Write to Elena Nikulina! She was sentenced to 4 years for talking about the Bible

Write to Elena Nikulina! She was sentenced to 4 years for talking about the Bible

▶️ Who is Elena Nikulina?

Elena is 57 and from Mordovia. As a child, she was into cross-country skiing and handicrafts; after school, she trained as a seamstress and pattern cutter. She worked as a seamstress at various enterprises and did cleaning work — moving from city to city more than once for the sake of work.

In her free time, she sewed, walked in nature, and cared for cats. In 2016, she married Georgy — a handyman with nine trades, in her words, a “jack of all trades.”

▶️ Criminal prosecution

In 2019, a criminal case was opened against Elena and her husband. According to investigators, their conversations about the Bible and religious meetings continued the activities of Jehovah’s Witnesses — an organization declared extremist in Russia.

In August 2022, Elena and her husband were sentenced to four years and two months in a penal colony. In court, Elena stressed:

“We… pose no danger either to the state and the authorities, or to those around us. We respect the laws and rules established by the authorities and try to work honestly and conscientiously.”

Elena is now serving her sentence in Correctional Colony No. 2 in Mordovia — and you can support her.

💌 Write Elena a letter through our Vestochka service! It’s free and safe. If this is your first time writing, there are detailed instructions on the website.

🛟 Subscribe to OVD-Info to understand how repression works in modern Russia. For example, in this dataset we explain how and why Jehovah’s Witnesses are persecuted.