The re-trial of a Buddhist leader on charges of disseminating false information about the Russian Armed Forces ended on 28 April, with the Moscow court handing down another guilty verdict. Ilya Vasilyev's initial conviction and 8-year prison term were overturned on a technicality in October 2025. This time, he received a sentence of 6 years' imprisonment and a ban on "administering websites". Vasilyev's lawyer, Gevorg Aleksanyan, has already lodged an initial appeal.

It is unclear why the new judge decided to hand down a shorter sentence. Meanwhile, the 52-year-old Vasilyev remains in detention at Moscow's Matrosskaya Tishina prison, where he has spent most of the 22 months since his June 2024 arrest (see below).

Vasilyev was on trial at Moscow's Preobrazhensky District Court under Criminal Code Article 207.3 ("Public dissemination of knowingly false information about the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation"), Part 2, Paragraph d ("for reasons of political, ideological, racial, national or religious hatred or enmity, or for reasons of hatred or enmity against any social group") for an English-language Facebook post (made "solely out of religious conviction", his lawyer told Forum 18) about a Russian missile attack on the Ukrainian city of Kherson in 2022 (see below).

"A prosecutor who doesn't understand Zen has intervened in a conversation between Buddhists about religious topics and is dragging the court into it," Vasilyev said in court on 23 April 2026. "Some people want to pressure Buddhists to fight on the side of one leader or another. But there are no soldiers' belt buckles with the inscription 'Buddha is with us'. Opening a 'Russia against Buddhism' front is not advantageous to Russia" (see below).

"When I took the Buddhist vow, I vowed to tell the truth. And when people here start saying in my name that what I say is a lie, it is, of course, a great challenge to me", Vasilyev added in his final speech on 27 April. "These past six months have been difficult for me. But if the court insists that I committed a crime, of course, I will continue to tell the truth. We will continue to defend ourselves and seek my release" (see below).

"I was given six years for reposting a Christmas card on Facebook", Vasilyev wrote in an open letter to supporters on 29 April. "This is significantly less than the eight they gave me a year ago. This is a great achievement for you, for not giving up and helping me. I am confident we are capable of more, of complete innocence proven in court, and I hope this stage will take less time. Upon release, I intend to continue my path to Zen monasticism .. I will be glad if some of you continue working to free other prisoners of conscience and restore freedom of speech in Russia."

"Does the voice of compassion have the right to be heard in our society?" Vasilyev's public defender Anna Tugolukova asked in her own final speech to the court. "Or will any call to stop violence be equated with the voice of an enemy?" (see below).

Moscow City Prosecutor's Office press service did not respond to Forum 18's questions as to why prosecutors had requested a custodial sentence and in what way Vasilyev could be considered dangerous (see below).

Preobrazhensky District Court did not respond to Forum 18's questions as to why a custodial sentence had been deemed necessary and in what way Vasilyev could be considered dangerous, and also why the court had imposed a shorter sentence than in the first trial (see below).

Federal Penitentiary Service officials say that no possibility currently exists for a Buddhist representative to visit Vasilyev there. The Matrosskaya Tishina administration did not respond to Forum 18's questions as to whether the prison service had yet concluded any agreement with a registered Buddhist organisation, and whether any other opportunity could exist for a detainee to see a Buddhist priest (see below).

On 24 March, the capital's Gagarin District Court convicted Orthodox journalist Kseniya Luchenko on the same charge for a Telegram post in which she condemned a Russian missile strike on a Kyiv children's hospital in July 2024, and contrasted this with the Russian state and Moscow Patriarchate's promotion of so-called "traditional values". The judge sentenced her in absentia to 8 years' imprisonment. Before her criminal trial, officials had had her name added to the Interior Ministry's Federal Wanted List, the Federal Financial Monitoring Service (Rosfinmonitoring) "List of Terrorists and Extremists", and the Justice Ministry's register of "foreign agents".

Although Luchenko left Russia in 2022, these measures – and now her criminal conviction – could nevertheless carry consequences. These include the risk of extradition if she travels to any state with a bilateral extradition agreement with Russia, and possible problems with banking in Western countries as a result of being placed on the Rosfinmonitoring List.

On 27 March 2026, the Russian Justice Ministry added the Christians Against War project to its register of "foreign agents" for allegedly disseminating "false information about the decisions and policies of Russian government bodies, as well as about the Russian Orthodox Church". Christians Against War was established shortly after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 in order to document the persecution of religious believers who oppose the war in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russian-occupied Ukraine.

Criminal, administrative convictions for opposing war on religious grounds

Since February 2022, courts have sentenced five people to imprisonment (including, most recently, Kseniya Luchenko in absentia, and Ilya Vasilyev) and have fined three on criminal charges for opposing Russia's war against Ukraine in religious terms or on religious grounds. Investigators have also opened three criminal cases against people who have left Russia and placed them on the Federal Wanted List.

Protestant pastor Nikolay Romanyuk was handed a 4-year prison term in September 2025 under Criminal Code Article 280.4 ("Public calls to implement activities directed against the security of the Russian Federation, or to obstruct the exercise by government bodies and their officials of their powers to ensure the security of the Russian Federation"). He is now serving his sentence in Vladimir Region, his daughter Svetlana Zhukova stated on her Telegram channel on 18 April.

Pastor Romanyuk's prison address is: 601443, g. Vyazniki, ul. Zheleznodorozhnaya 37, FKU Ispravitelnaya koloniya - 4 UFSIN Rossii po Vladimirskoy oblasti

Individuals also continue to face prosecution under Administrative Code Article 20.3.3 ("Public actions aimed at discrediting the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation") for opposing the war in Ukraine from a religious perspective.

Most recently, Slavyansk City Court in Krasnodar Region fined independent Orthodox priest Fr Iona Sigida 40,000 Roubles under Administrative Code Article 20.3.3, Part 1 in December 2025. Police had based the case against Fr Iona on an article on his church's website in which he wrote "Today, on the night of 23-24 February [2022], the newly revealed antichrist, the embodiment of the devil, V. Putin, sent his army to destroy the last unconquered holy Rus' in the person of Ukraine".

(Fr Iona remains under investigation for a possibly related offence of "overt disrespect for society about days of military glory" (Criminal Code Article 354.1, Part 4), apparently also for articles he posted on the website of the Holy Intercession Tikhonite Church in Slavyansk-na-Kubani. On 16 April, a judge released him from house arrest, but he is still barred from using the telephone and internet.)

Ever-increasing internet censorship has seen websites and materials blocked for: "extremist" content; opposition to Russia's war against Ukraine from a religious perspective; material supporting LGBT+ people in religious communities; Ukraine-based religious websites; social media of prosecuted individuals; and news and NGO sites which include coverage of freedom of religion or belief violations.

The Justice Ministry has also added at least 14 religious leaders and activists to its register of "foreign agents", largely for reasons related to their opposition to the invasion of Ukraine.

June 2024 arrest

The Investigative Committee opened a criminal case against Moscow Buddhist leader and computer programmer Ilya Vladimirovich Vasilyev (born 9 December 1973) on 20 June 2024, partly on the basis of information from the Federal Security Service (FSB). It arrested him the same day after a search of his home.

Prosecutors charged Vasilyev under Criminal Code Article 207.3 ("Public dissemination of knowingly false information about the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation"), Part 2, Paragraph d ("for reasons of political, ideological, racial, national or religious hatred or enmity, or for reasons of hatred or enmity against any social group").

This was based on an English-language Facebook post of 25 December 2022, which said: "Putin rejected Christmas armistice. His rockets are right now shelling peaceful Ukrainian cities and towns. Only yesterday 16 people died in Kherson, where my father's family lives. Or lived? Millions of Ukrainians are now without electricity and water supply. The picture is called 'Christmas 2022'."

Included in the post was a painting by Ukrainian-born artist Iriney Yurchuk, depicting a nativity scene in the ruins of a bombed-out block of flats.

According to the prosecution, with this post Vasilyev deliberately "misled an unlimited number of people" and "created the appearance of illegal activity that violated international law" by the Russian armed forces and government. The prosecution claimed he was acting out of "political hatred, expressed in a 'disdainful, unfriendly, hostile, aggressive' attitude towards the authorities".

Vasilyev made the Facebook post, as well as others on the VKontakte social network which led to a May 2023 administrative prosecution, "solely out of religious conviction", he told Forum 18 through his lawyer in November 2024. He added that he is "not a politician and is engaged only in religion".

(Vasilyev deleted his Facebook page in May 2023 immediately after his administrative prosecution, as his lawyer noted in court on 23 April 2026, but FSB investigators had already made a record of the Kherson post.)

June 2025 conviction

Ilya Vasilyev's case first reached Moscow's Preobrazhensky District Court in October 2024. The trial ended in a guilty verdict in June 2025 after thirteen hearings before Judge Valentina Lebedeva.

Judge Lebedeva convicted Vasilyev of disseminating "knowingly false information" about the Armed Forces and sentenced him to 8 years' imprisonment (followed by a 4-year ban on "administering websites").

Had Vasilyev's 8-year prison term entered legal force, it would have been the longest known custodial sentence imposed for opposing Russia's war in Ukraine on religious grounds.

A panel of three judges at Moscow City Court overturned the verdict on 22 October 2025, and ordered that a different judge at Preobrazhensky District Court should re-examine Vasilyev's case. They concluded that the court had unlawfully refused Vasilyev's request, early in proceedings, to have an acquaintance act as his public defender [zashchitnik], alongside his lawyer.

2026 re-trial

The re-trial of Ilya Vasilyev, founder of the Moscow Zen Centre and the Civil School of Hackers, began on 19 January 2026, also at the city's Preobrazhensky District Court, but this time before Judge Andrey Kuznetsov. Vasilyev made a total of nine appearances in court.

At the hearing on 12 March, defence witness Mariya Popova, a family friend of the Vasilyevs, told the court that "accusations of disseminating any kind of false information are completely inconsistent with Vasilyev's Buddhist worldview", the independent SOTAvision news channel reported on Telegram the same day.

"It's hard to create a school—to have people sit and listen to you," Popova said. "All his schools are about kindness, about love."

On 14 April, Judge Kuznetsov denied lawyer Gevorg Aleksanyan's request for another expert examination of Vasilyev's Facebook post, independent of the FSB (whose expert carried out the original linguistic analysis). Aleksanyan argued that the FSB's analysis "cannot be considered complete or reliable", SOTAvision noted on 14 April.

The lawyer pointed to the FSB expert's apparent lack of experience, the fact she did not cite the authors of the methods used, meaning that "The entire report is based on methods that cannot be verified", and the use of two different Russian translations of Vasilyev's English-language post – one a machine translation which investigators sent for expert analysis, the other a professional translation included in the indictment and submitted to the court.

"Key thesis of the prosecution – the motive of political hatred – is contrary to .. Zen Buddhism"

In court at his re-trial, Ilya Vasilyev "disagreed with attempts to attribute emotions and intentions to him that he did not experience", independent Russian news outlet Novaya Gazeta reported on 28 April. He said he had timed his post for 25 December (in 2022) – "a day significant for many religious traditions" – and did not address it to a Russian audience.

Vasilyev admitted only that he had indeed made the post, and denied the accusation of disseminating false information motivated by hatred, insisting that his intention was completely the opposite. He stated: "They're trying to throw me behind bars here on a far-fetched pretext."

Vasilyev's public defender Anna Tugolukova also argued that "the key thesis of the prosecution – the motive of political hatred – is contrary to the very nature of Zen Buddhism", at the core of which is "compassion, which does not divide people into 'us' and 'them'", Novaya Gazeta quoted her as saying.

"For a mind nurtured in the Zen tradition, there is no difference between the suffering of a soldier in one army and the suffering of a soldier in another," Tugolukova said. "There is simply suffering".

"Does the voice of compassion have the right to be heard in our society," Tugolukova concluded. "Or will any call to stop violence be equated with the voice of an enemy?"

"When I took the Buddhist vow, I vowed to tell the truth"

"The history of Buddhism is the history of victory over ignorance. And Buddha wins not because you take the winning side. Buddha wins because you stop engaging in momentary nonsense and focus on what truly matters", Ilya Vasilyev said in his final speech to the court on 27 April.

"My [teaching] method is traditional. Students come to me for training, reach their hacker level, and return to defend their businesses, their families, and their countries. They don't attack their neighbours or engage in criminal activity; they serve their nations with their acquired skills, being worthy citizens. The FSB, however, can turn law-abiding citizens into criminals, locking them up in pre-trial detention on trumped-up charges."

"When I took the Buddhist vow, I vowed to tell the truth. And when people here start saying in my name that what I say is a lie, it is, of course, a great challenge to me. These past six months have been difficult for me. But if the court insists that I committed a crime, of course, I will continue to tell the truth. We will continue to defend ourselves and seek my release."

"Reducing religion to some kind of puppet show backed by security forces means Buddhism becoming a department of the FSB. I've met practitioners who are afraid to adhere fully to Buddha's teachings because they fear prison."

"I wonder what we're bringing to the new territories [i.e. Russian-occupied Ukraine], what kind of culture? True greatness is achieved not by force of arms, but by wisdom, the power of conviction, and personal example."

Vasilyev expressed his belief that Russia would soon start respecting human rights and that convictions under Criminal Code Article 207.5 would be overturned. He stated that he would continue to practice Buddhism if sent to a penal colony.

"Ultimately, people will no longer be jailed for words in Russia, and Russia will protect the rights of Russian-speaking people not only in foreign territories, but also in its own territories and even in Moscow, my home city, which I love," Vasilyev told the court.

Buddhist leader convicted again

On 28 April 2026, the re-trial of Ilya Vasilyev, at Preobrazhensky District Court, also ended in conviction. Judge Andrey Kuznetsov sentenced Vasilyev to 6 years' imprisonment for disseminating "false information" about the Armed Forces, plus a ban on "administering websites" for 3 years and 6 months, the Moscow court system announced on its Telegram channel on the same day.

Vasilyev's lawyer Gevorg Aleksanyan has already lodged an initial appeal, he told Forum 18 shortly after the final court hearing. In the meantime, Vasilyev remains at Moscow's Matrosskaya Tishina prison, where he has been detained for almost all of the 22 months since Investigative Committee officers arrested him in June 2024 for the Facebook post about a Russian missile strike on Kherson in Ukraine.

Freedom of speech "is not a whim of human rights activists for the sake of grants. It's essential for survival, for the preservation of territorial integrity", Vasilyev told the court on 23 April. "My case has religious and political overtones. A guilty verdict complicates international relations, which Russia is currently trying to maintain."

"The situation in Russia, Russian Orthodoxy, and Russia's attitude toward religion will be judged by this verdict."

"A prosecutor who doesn't understand Zen has intervened in a conversation between Buddhists about religious topics and is dragging the court into it," Vasilyev continued. "Some people want to pressure Buddhists to fight on the side of one leader or another. But there are no soldiers' belt buckles with the inscription 'Buddha is with us'. Opening a 'Russia against Buddhism' front is not advantageous to Russia."

On 23 April, prosecutors requested a sentence of 8 years' imprisonment for Vasilyev. "Of course, it is difficult to say anything" as to why the judge decided on a shorter term, Aleksanyan commented to Forum 18.

During the final exchange of arguments [preniya] on 23 April, Aleksanyan remarked that "had he been tasked with examining charges for words more than ten years ago, when he was graduating from university, he would have reconsidered his career choice", the independent SOTAvision news outlet reported the same day. He noted that by requesting such a long prison sentence, the state was "equating murder cases with cases for words".

"What should [Vasilyev] have learned in that time? Never to call for peace again? I'm sure this [Criminal Code] article will be repealed one day, as it is unconstitutional," Aleksanyan stated to the court.

Forum 18 wrote to the Moscow City Prosecutor's Office press service on 24 April to ask why prosecutors had requested a custodial sentence and in what way Vasilyev could be considered dangerous.

Forum 18 also wrote to Preobrazhensky District Court on 28 April to ask why a custodial sentence had been deemed necessary and in what way Vasilyev could be considered dangerous, and also why the court had imposed a shorter sentence than in the first trial.

Forum 18 had received no response from either institution by the end of the Moscow working day of 29 April.

Nearly two years in detention

On 20 February, the court extended Vasilyev's detention period again – this time until 6 June 2026 – refusing Aleksanyan's request to have him placed under house arrest instead. Vasilyev appealed unsuccessfully against this decision on 24 March.

According to the detention order appeal ruling, seen by Forum 18, Aleksanyan noted that Vasilyev has no previous criminal record and before his arrest had lived with and cared for his mother, who "suffers from chronic illnesses". He argued that "the [district] court's conclusion regarding the defendant's potential to abscond or otherwise obstruct the proceedings is not supported by the case materials and was made by the court without regard to Vasilyev's character [lichnost]".

The Moscow City Court appeal judge nevertheless decided that "The circumstances that served as grounds for selecting detention as a preventive measure for Vasilyev have neither changed nor ceased to exist", given that Vasilyev stands accused of "committing a serious crime", which "provides grounds to believe that, if released, he might abscond from the court, continue his criminal activities, or otherwise obstruct the proceedings in the criminal case".

In Matrosskaya Tishina Prison, Vasilyev appears to be free to meditate and read religious literature as he wishes. He also exchanges letters with acquaintances, discussing Buddhist thought and general topics (some of which are posted as open letters on his support channel on Telegram). He noted in one open letter, however, that he cannot write about either his case or "everyday life" in the detention centre.

The detention centre also continues to refuse Vasilyev access to a Buddhist priest, lawyer Gevorg Aleksanyan told Forum 18 on 13 April.

In July 2025, Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) officials told Aleksanyan that a detainee could only see a priest if a formal agreement existed between FSIN and a centralised religious organisation. Officials said that, because so few detainees were Buddhist, no such agreement was in place.

FSIN officials nevertheless added that "the matter remains under review", and would be reconsidered if there were an increase in the number of Buddhists or more requests were received.

Forum 18 wrote to Matrosskaya Tishina Prison on 15 April 2026, asking whether the prison service had yet concluded any agreement with a registered Buddhist organisation, and whether any other opportunity could exist for a detainee to see a Buddhist priest. Forum 18 had received no reply by the end of the working day in Moscow of 29 April.

Vasilyev is likely to remain in the same prison until his appeal is heard. His address:

107076 g. Moskva
ul. Matrosskaya Tishina 18
FKU Sledstvenniy izolyator No. 1 UFSIN Rossii po g. Moskve

(END)

More reports on freedom of thought, conscience and belief in Russia

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