Russia’s ‘Jesus Christ’ Arrested: How Ex-Traffic Cop Turned Messiah Built A Cult After Soviet Fall

Hindustan Times

July 9, 2025

The end of the USSR in 1991 was one of the most cataclysmic events in history, with its aftereffects still being felt three decades on. But there was one such moment triggered at the same time, that was unforeseen. It was the rise of a new religious order in a remote corner of Russia, powered by the 'spiritual awakening' of a man. Meet Sergei Torop, or as he is popularly known, the 'Vissarion'. In the 1990s, Torop claimed he was the reincarnation of Jesus of Nazareth. A new Church was established, Torop amassed thousands of followers but then came his fall from grace, he was subjected to thorough investigation leading to a severe directive from the Russian state.

In this episode of HT In-Depth, we look at the history of Sergei Torop's cult, from his 'divine revelation', to the establishment of his new 'Church', and the perceived end of his massive cult. Watch this video for full details on the Vissarion."

‘Jesus of Siberia’ Cult Leader Sentenced to 12 Years in Prison

The Moscow Times

June 30, 2025

A court in Novosibirsk on Monday sentenced a Siberian cult leader who claimed to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ to 12 years in prison for harming the mental and physical health of his followers.

Sergei Torop, a former traffic officer who calls himself “Vissarion,” founded the Church of the Last Testament in 1991 after what he described as a divine revelation. He attracted thousands of followers to remote settlements in Siberia, including a core group of about 300 living in isolation atop a hill they called the Abode of Dawn.

Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office said Monday that Torop and two of his associates were found guilty of creating a religious organization that violated the civil rights of its members and caused bodily harm.

Prosecutors accused Torop of using psychological manipulation to exert control over and exploit followers for labor and money between 1991 and 2020.

His actions, they said, caused 16 people “moral harm,” left six with “serious health problems” and one with “moderate” harm.

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Samara Region Police Open ‘Nazi Rehabilitation’ Probe After Teenagers Sing Ukrainian Song

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Torop, 64, was arrested in a helicopter raid on his Krasnoyarsk region commune in 2020. His associates — Vadim Redkin and Vladimir Vedyornikov — were sentenced to 11 and 12 years in prison, respectively.

All three men denied wrongdoing. It was not immediately clear if they planned to appeal their sentences.

The court also awarded 45 million rubles ($572,000) in damages to the victims and state prosecutors.

Vissarion’s movement grew in popularity during the post-Soviet ideological vacuum of the 1990s and further isolated itself after the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, shutting its communes to outsiders.

AFP contributed reporting.

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2025/06/30/jesus-of-siberia-cult-leader-sentenced-to-12-years-in-prison-a89618

Russia far-right sect tries to get foothold in Europe

France 24
March 15, 2023

Heiligenbrunn (Austria) (AFP) – Ines and Norman Kosin left everything behind to follow the teachings of Anastasia, a far-right Russian sect that preaches a return to the land.

They used to work on Sylt, a trendy holiday island in the Baltic off northern Germany.

"Our life was very secure, but our heart was not happy," said Ines, a pastry chef and chocolate maker.

"Something was missing," she said.

So three years ago they set out to found a New Age Anastasian community on an isolated farm in the bucolic Burgenland of eastern Austria.

Interest in the movement -- whose teachings reject much of modern medicine, contain anti-Semitic tropes and qualify democracy as "demonocracy" -- surged during the pandemic.

The neo-pagan sect began in Russia in 1996 inspired by a series of bestselling books called the "Ringing Cedars" by Russian entrepreneur Vladimir Megre.

Mysterious prophet

He claims the teachings come directly from Anastasia, a mysterious hermit with supernatural powers he met in the Siberian taiga. The beautiful blonde preached against the "enslavement" of modern industrial society and the "dark forces" leading humanity to disaster.

As her prophet, Megre passed on her call for people to return to living in harmony with nature in "kinship" groups on small, self-sufficient permaculture farms.

The group claims some 400 Anastasian settlements have since sprung up across Russia.

Norman Kosin dreamed of welcoming 100 families to an Anastasian "space of love" in Austria.

"Imagine a doctor, midwives, lumberjacks and artisans all settling down with each one plying their trade, doing what fulfils them as humans," said Kosin, who hopes to do the same, touching his cedar wood medallion for "positive energy".

But so far Kosin has not been able to persuade anyone to join them permanently in Austria.

In another blow, officials have asked them to leave the country because they failed to show sufficient income to stay.

Kosin, who is sometimes known online as Felix Kramer, or Felix von Elysion ("from Elysium", the name of his hoped-for community), has also campaigned against Covid vaccines and restrictions.

The couple took two of their three daughters, aged 10 and 14, out of school in protest at Covid testing and "indoctrination" at school. Their four-year-old still goes to kindergarten.

"Children's souls are so innocent," he said, drawing parallels with what he called anti-Russian "propaganda" since the war in Ukraine, which he said was "marking people for life".

Kosin regularly denounces media "lies" in online conspiracy theory channels that have several hundred thousand followers, and is convinced that the "system" -- which he claimed "degenerated" people -- will collapse.

'Anti-Semitic elements'

He said the Anastasia movement has between 3,000 and 4,000 followers in Germany, Switzerland and Austria, with members scattered across the rest of Europe from Portugal to Bulgaria.

A recent Austrian government report said the "pandemic has given Anastasia a considerable boost in German-speaking countries," highlighting links with the anti-vax movement.

Ulrike Schiesser from Austria's Federal Office for Sectarian Affairs, which monitors sects, said the movement has attracted official scrutiny because of its "anti-democratic" stance.

While the movement "contains all sorts of harmless ideas for better living," she told AFP, "it poses a problem... because it positions itself against democracy, the state and science."

Schiesser said "the anti-Semitic elements clearly present" in the sect's books were "generally ignored, denied or played down" by members, who refuse to "criticise the guru's writings".

Kosin defended the books, saying "because of two or three chapters, everyone who reads the works is placed in the national socialist (Nazi) category."

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230315-russia-far-right-sect-tries-to-get-foothold-in-europe

CultNEWS101 Articles: 2/1/2023

College of Integrated Philosophy, Oasis Group, Johannes de Ruiter, Canada, Jehovah's Witnesses, Religious Freedom, Russia, Children of God

CBC: Edmonton spiritual leader charged with 4 counts of sexual assault

"A well-known Edmonton-based spiritual leader has been charged with four counts of sexual assault.

Johannes de Ruiter, known as John de Ruiter, was arrested and charged Saturday by Edmonton police.

De Ruiter is the leader of a group known as the College of Integrated Philosophy, or the Oasis Group, which has been operating in Edmonton for decades.

Police allege de Ruiter, 63, assaulted four people in separate incidents between 2017 and 2020.

"It was reported that the accused informed certain female group members that he was directed by a spirit to engage in sexual activity with them, and that engaging in sexual activity with him will provide them an opportunity to achieve a state of higher being or spiritual enlightenment," police said in a news release Monday. 

Investigators say they believe there may be additional complainants and are asking others to come forward.

None of the allegations have been proven in court.

Reached for comment, a spokesperson said de Ruiter intends to challenge the allegations."

Eurasiareview: Russia: Attacks On Religious Freedom Continue With Two Trials, Nine Long Jail Terms

"In two trials in mid-December 2022, two courts in Russia's Far East sentenced a total of 9 Jehovah's Witnesses to long jail terms. All but one received jail terms of between 6 and 7 years. The 9 men were among 19 Jehovah's Witnesses to receive general-regime prison terms in the last quarter of 2022.

Raids, prosecutions, and convictions of Jehovah's Witnesses for practising their faith in Russia continued unabated in 2022, despite the issuance in late 2021 of amended guidance for judges in extremism-related cases.

Across the calendar year, there were 124 convictions in first-instance courts, according to statistics from the European Association of Jehovah's Witnesses (a small number were later overturned on appeal and sent back to prosecutors or for re-trial). The number of convictions has risen every year since prosecutions began in 2018, in the wake of the nationwide ban on Jehovah's Witness activities.

In Birobidzhan, capital of the Jewish Autonomous Region, which has seen one of the highest numbers of prosecutions in the country, the district court handed two men 7-year sentences and their two fellow defendants terms of 6-and-a-half years and 3-and-a-half years respectively, all followed by lengthy periods of restrictions and bans on particular activities..."

The Conversation: 'Have I just joined another cult?': Daniella grew up in The Family, then joined the army - where she experienced toxic control, again

"On Daniella Mestyanek Young's first day of military training, she stands among her fellow recruits holding a duffle bag high in one arm above her head. As she ponders the other bodies lined up in her peripheral vision, all struggling to maintain the same pose, it gradually occurs to her that this feeling — of being owned, coerced, programmed — seems unsettlingly familiar: "Have I just joined another cult?"

This sense of suspicion forms a pattern in Mestyanek Young's life, which she documents with remarkable insight in her memoir, Uncultured, exploring the systems of control in which toxicity can thrive.

Mestyanek Young was born into the religious cult the Children of God, also known as The Family. (Not to be confused with Anne Hamilton Byrne's Australian-based cult, also known as The Family.)

Mestyanek Young spent her childhood shuffled from compound to compound in Brazil, Mexico and the United States. At 15, she fled what she would come to recognise as a cult, made her way to Texas and put herself through school and college, eventually graduating as valedictorian and joining the US army, where she served as an intelligence officer.

But this book is not simply a survival story. It's an exposé of the abuse that can run unchecked within cults. It's a story about trauma, a war memoir, a meditation on the difference between culture and cults. And it's a searing indictment of groups that continue to view those who are not men as subservient to those who are.

But at its core, Uncultured is a book about groups. It asks readers to look closely at the power mechanisms at work within the communities we call our own."

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CultNEWS101 Articles: 1/21/2022 (Sisters of the Valley, Islam, Sikhism, Religious Research, Canada, Psychedelics, Shamanism, South Africa, Russia, Religious Freedom, Legal)

Sisters of the Valley, Islam, Sikhism, Religious Research, Canada, Psychedelics, Shamanism, South Africa, Russia, Religious Freedom, Legal

Rolling Stone: Our Ladies of the Perpetual High

"In the middle of California's Central Valley, in a modest milky-blue home on one acre of farmland, lives a small group of nuns. They wear habits and abide by a set of vows, but as the door opens, it's clear that the Sisters of the Valley, as they're known, aren't living in a traditional convent. Because as the scent wafts out, it's unambiguous: It's the earthy, pungent smell of weed.

When we visit, five women live in the home: Sister Kate, 62; Sister Sophia, 49; Sister Quinn, 25; and at the moment, Sister Luna and Sister Camilla, both 34, who are visiting from Mexico. Sister Kass, 29, lives off the property with her two children and her partner, Brother Rudy, the collective's crop manager. On this sunny day, the Sisters of the Valley home is flooded with golden beams of light; a cream-colored piano stands against the wall with an ashtray and joint placed on top. Sister Kate picks it up, lights it, and thoughtfully inhales as she sits down to play "America the Beautiful." She's using a piano-learning app filled with Christian songs and national anthems — the two genres of music she dislikes the most. But there is an underlying motive: "The Christian kids nearby have contests, so if I do a lot of practicing in a month, then I can beat them," she says with a raspy laugh. "There is some gratification in beating the Christian kids."

The Sisters of the Valley are not a religious organization, but an enclave of self-proclaimed sisters who are in the business of spreading spirituality and selling healing cannabidiol products. "Look, the average age of a new Catholic nun in America is 78," says Sister Kate, founder of the sect, which has 22 sisters and eight brothers worldwide. "Christianity is dying all around us. What are people going to do? They need spirituality in their life; we need it for meaning. We are very spiritual beings walking a physical path, and so for that reason we will find ways to connect. And we are just one example of that."

Their property is a peaceful setting, with ashtrays everywhere. There's a craft yurt, vegetable beds of kale and spinach, a trailer where Sister Quinn resides, and tall potted cannabis plants, which were cultivated in a shed and planted outside in preparation for the upcoming full-moon harvest. (All of these are hemp, from which they extract CBD, but they also grow marijuana for personal use.) A secondary home on the property, known as the abbey, is used for medicine-making. The scent of their lavender salve consumes this space. The walls are lined with photos of nuns and female religious figures, some with joints, some without. Sister Sophia smiles as she stirs a pot on the stove, heating up their CBD topical salve before packaging it into jars. When it comes to their products, it is always referred to as medicine, not cannabis, and all steps from planting, to trimming, to packaging are scheduled around the moon cycle."

Global News: Islam, Sikhism and why immigration drives religion in Canada: 'It's the curriculum of our life'

"When Ushpreet Singh arrived in Whitehorse, Yukon, in late 2020, he was dismayed to find that the town of 33,000 people did not have a gurdwara — a place of worship for Sikhs like him.

At the time, there were about a dozen Sikh families in Whitehorse and a makeshift Sikh committee, but no meeting place.

So Singh set about trying to establish one himself.

"I asked where all the paperwork was and when I saw it, the total donation was $6,000 in 20 years," the 23-year-old tells Global News.

"It was not enough to establish a temple, it was not enough for anything. I was really upset; this money couldn't help us. And no one wanted to help."

One year and one monumental fundraising campaign later, Whitehorse is now home to a gurdwara for a Sikh community that now numbers between 300 and 400 people.

Singh is one of many new immigrants fuelling religious growth among minority groups in Canada.

As Christian religiosity falls to unprecedented levels (just 68 per cent reported a religious affiliation in Canada in 2019, according to new StatCan data), minority religions such as Sikhism, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism continue to thrive, fuelled by immigration.

In fact, by 2036, StatCan predicts that the number of people affiliated with non-Christian religions could almost double.

The Sunday Times: Inside the weird world of extreme wellness retreats

"Nine years ago I stayed at Kalari Kovilakom, a wellness retreat in Kerala, India. This was no ordinary wellness retreat. Instead of fluffy robes and champagne-drinking in the hot tub, my phone was whisked away on arrival, I was obliged to wear white pajamas the entire time, and I had to rise in the darkness, like a monk, to do yoga before dawn. Then there was the ghee. Clarified butter was poured over and into every one of my orifices daily. My many treatments included having a 50cm "hat" made of lino attached to my head, and then melted ghee was slowly poured down it. There were enemas with, you guessed it, ghee.

My fellow guests were a veritable united nations of health-seekers, including an exiled politician from Egypt and a group of Canadian millionaires. The Egyptian minister had been there for months and must have been 90 per cent ghee. I was there for more than two weeks, and while I left feeling calm and happy, I could never shake the suspicion that I was also re-enacting an episode of Absolutely Fabulous.

Welcome to the world of extreme wellness, which is the subject of the hot new TV series Nine Perfect Strangers. Based on the bestselling novel by Liane Moriarty, the setting is the fictional Australian health retreat Tranquillum House. There are nine guests — clients, victims, fools, prisoners, call them what you think best describes the attendees at a wellness retreat where, on arrival, all phones are removed, luggage is swept for snacks and booze, and the doors are locked. There is also a crucial plot twist that involves the mind-bending delivery of what is known as a therapeutic (read, huge) dose of the psychedelic compound LSD. If LSD and imprisonment sounds like a ludicrous literary conceit, then you have clearly never succumbed to the joy and pain of extreme wellness."

Eurasia Review: Russia: 'Foreign Agents', 'Undesirable Organizations', And Freedom Of Religion Or Belief

"Russia has used increasingly strict legislation on "foreign agents'' (a term which has connotations of spying) and "undesirable organisations" to curtail, complicate, or prohibit the activities of organizations which promote human rights and monitor their violation, including that of freedom of religion and belief. This "indirectly affects the people human rights defenders stand up for '', says Aleksandr Verkhovsky of the SOVA Centre for Information and Analysis (branded a "foreign agent"). The Justice Ministry and prosecutors are seeking through the courts to close down the Memorial Human Rights Centre (also branded a "foreign agent"), partly for its monitoring of criminal prosecutions of Jehovah's Witnesses.

Courts in Moscow are considering whether to liquidate two organizations belonging to Memorial, one of Russia's longest-established human rights movements – with one lawsuit partially based on Memorial's support for freedom of religion and belief.

On 23 December, Moscow City Court began considering the Justice Ministry's and city prosecutors' request to close down the Memorial Human Rights Centre, on the grounds both of alleged violations of the law on "foreign agents" and of "justification of the activities of terrorist and extremist organisations", including Jehovah's Witnesses.

Meanwhile, judges at Russia's Supreme Court have completed their examination of the General Prosecutor's Office's case against the International Memorial. Both sides are due to make their arguments to the court on 28 December."

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CultNEWS101 Articles: 12/28/2021 (ultra-Orthodox, Israel, Legal, Russia, Father Sergiy, Covid, Falun Gong, Misinformation)

ultra-Orthodox, Israel, Legal, Russia, Father Sergiy, Covid, Falun Gong, Misinformation

Times of Israel: Berland's son-in-law, follower named as suspects in cold case murders linked to sect

"The son-in-law of convicted sex offender Eliezer Berland and another follower of the extremist Shuvu Bonim sect were named on Monday as two of the suspects in the cold case murder and suspected murder tied to the cult.

The names of the two were permitted to be published after a ruling by the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court.

The first suspect was named as Tzvi Tzucker, Berland's son-in-law who served as head of the ultra-Orthodox sect's "religious police." He left the sect a few years ago amid the allegations of sexual abuse against his father-in-law.

Tzucker has denied all involvement in the killings.

The second suspect was named as Baruch Sharvit, a member of Berland's cult. According to Channel 13 news, Sharvit has admitted to investigators that he killed 17-year-old Nissim Shitrit and has implicated other suspects.

Earlier this month, Kan news reported that Sharvit met with Berland in the interrogation room, where the sect leader instructed his follower to provide information to the investigators.

According to the report, Sharvit then admitted to playing a role in the murder of Shitrit as well as the killing of 41-year-old Avi Edri. Sharvit was said to have additionally incriminated other suspects.

Shitrit was allegedly beaten by the sect's "religious police" four months before he disappeared in January 1986.

In a documentary broadcast by Kan in 2020, one of Berland's former disciples said that the religious police murdered the boy, dismembered him and buried his body in Eshtaol Forest near Beit Shemesh. His remains were never found and the case was never solved.

Edri was found beaten to death in Ramot Forest in the north of Jerusalem in 1990."

AP News: Russian coronavirus-denying monk given prison sentence

"A rebel Russian monk who castigated the Kremlin and denied that the coronavirus existed was convicted Tuesday on accusations of encouraging suicides and given a 3½-year prison sentence.

The monk, Father Sergiy, was arrested in December 2020 on charges of inciting suicidal actions through sermons in which he urged believers to "die for Russia," breaching the freedom of conscience and making arbitrary moves. He rejected the accusations and his lawyers said they would appeal Tuesday's ruling by Moscow's Ismailovo District Court.

Father Sergiy reacted to the verdict with a biblical "Do not judge and you will not be judged."

When the coronavirus pandemic began, the 66-year-old monk denied its existence and denounced government efforts to stem the pandemic as "Satan's electronic camp." He has spread the long-debunked conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and described the coronavirus vaccines being developed against COVID-19 as part of a purported global plot to control the masses via microchips.

The monk urged followers to disobey the government's lockdown measures and holed up at a monastery near Yekaterinburg that he founded and had dozens of burly volunteers, including veterans of the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine, help enforce his rules while the prioress and several nuns left."

New York Times: Those Cute Cats Online? They Help Spread Misinformation

"On Oct. 2, New Tang Dynasty Television, a station linked to the Chinese spiritual movement Falun Gong, posted a Facebook video of a woman saving a baby shark stranded on a shore. Next to the video was a link to subscribe to The Epoch Times, a newspaper that is tied to Falun Gong and that spreads anti-China and right-wing conspiracies. The post collected 33,000 likes, comments and shares.

The website of Dr. Joseph Mercola, an osteopathic physician who researchers say is a chief spreader of coronavirus misinformation online, regularly posts about cute animals that generate tens or even hundreds of thousands of interactions on Facebook. The stories include "Kitten and Chick Nap So Sweetly Together" and "Why Orange Cats May Be Different From Other Cats," written by Dr. Karen Becker, a veterinarian."

" ... Videos and GIFs of cute animals — usually cats — have gone viral online for almost as long as the internet has been around. Many of the animals became famous: There's Keyboard Cat, Grumpy Cat, Lil Bub and Nyan Cat, just to name a few.

Now, it is becoming increasingly clear how widely the old-school internet trick is being used by people and organizations peddling false information online, misinformation researchers say.

The posts with the animals do not directly spread false information. But they can draw a huge audience that can be redirected to a publication or site spreading false information about election fraud, unproven coronavirus cures and other baseless conspiracy theories entirely unrelated to the videos. Sometimes, following a feed of cute animals on Facebook unknowingly signs users up as subscribers to misleading posts from the same publisher."

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Kyrgyz Court Refuses To Recognize Books Used By Jehovah's Witnesses As 'Extremist'

RFE/RL
December 03, 2021


BISHKEK -- A court in Bishkek has refused to deem publications from the Jehovah's Witnesses as extremist, rejecting a step by authorities toward completely outlawing the religious group.

The Birinchi Mai district court in the Kyrgyz capital on December 3 rejected a request by the Prosecutor-General’s Office to recognize 11 books, two brochures, and six videotapes belonging to the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Kyrgyzstan as extremist.

The materials in question were confiscated in 2019 from the religious group, which has operated in the Central Asian nation for more than 23 years, by the State Committee for National Security (UKMK).

Investigators then concluded that the materials "instigate religious hatred," while the Prosecutor-General’s Office asked the court last month to recognize the literature and videotapes as extremist and ban the group's activities in the country.

The Jehovah's Witnesses was officially registered in Kyrgyzstan in 1998. Currently, there are some 5,000 followers of the religious teaching.

Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan are the only Central Asian nations where Jehovah’s Witnesses are not officially outlawed.

In Russia, a large-scale crackdown on the religious denomination has been conducted since it was labeled as extremist and banned there in 2017.



https://www.rferl.org/a/kyrgyzstan-jehovahs-witnesses-extremist/31592362.html

U.S. Adds Russia To List Of Nations Violating Religious Freedoms

Carlie Porterfield
Forbes Staff
November 17, 2021

The United States has added Russia to an index of countries called out over “egregious violations of religious freedom,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday, which could have economic policy consequences for nations listed.

KEY FACTS

• Russia was added to the list amid media reports from ABC News, Foreign Policy and local media of police harassing, detaining and seizing property of the country’s Jehovah’s Witnesses, an offshoot of Christianity with roots in the U.S.
• The domination was banned in Russia in 2017 over being “extremist,” and hundreds of worshippers have been jailed since, according to reports.
• Authorities in Russia also target Muslim minority groups on the pretense of investigating terrorist threats, Blinken said.
• Russia joins the list alongside countries noted to be places of “particular concern,” including North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Burma and China, the secretary of state said.
• Congress is notified when countries are listed and economic measures can be imposed if other policy options do not stop “particularly severe violations” of religious freedom, according to the state department.
• This summer, the Biden Administration warned American businesses against using materials or services created by Uighurs in Xinjiang, China, where the government set up forced labor camps, warning that it is a violation of sanctions preventing forced labor.

On Wednesday, the Russian Supreme Court ruled to ban criminal prosecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses for group prayer, which media outlets like the Moscow Times speculate may end police raids over services.

The list is part of the state department’s annual International Religious Freedom Report, which will be delivered to Congress. The U.S. will “continue to press” countries to address their shortcomings and ensure religious freedom, Blinken said Wednesday. Since the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, which pushed state atheism, religious practice has made a comeback in Russia. The most-practiced religion in Russia is Russian Orthodoxy, a branch of Christianity that traces its history back to the apostle Andrew, who according to tradition traveled and proselytized across the region north of the Black Sea.


I am a Texas native covering breaking news out of New York City. Previously, I was an editorial assistant at the Forbes London bureau.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2021/11/17/us-adds-russia-to-list-of-nations-violating-religious-freedoms/

The COVID-Denying, Tsar-Loving Russian 'Cult' That's Too Extreme for Putin

A charismatic and rebellious monk built an ultra-religious commune at the very edge of Europe. Now he’s under arrest and his followers are left in limbo.


Gabriel Gavin
VIICE
September 29, 2021

“Will you die if I ask you to?” That was the question Father Sergei Romanov asked of his nuns. One by one, the women approached the head of their convent, draped in black robes, his long gray hair tied back into a ponytail. “I’ll die with joy,” came the reply. “If you bless me, I will die.”

Wearing thick winter jackets, their heads covered, the women queued to kiss his hands and receive a blessing while he raged against drunkenness and moral decay. The sermon, held last December at the convent in the forests outside Ekaterinburg in Russia’s Urals region, 900 miles east of Moscow – where Europe ends and Asia begins – would be one of the controversial Russian monk’s last. A video of the eerily-lit exchange went viral on social media last year, prompting a police inquiry.

Already excommunicated from the Orthodox Church and now facing claims he was running a secretive death cult, Romanov and his hundreds of followers prepared to make their last stand at Sredneuralsk monastery. “Let them come,” he told the congregation around him. “Let them try to fight with our spiritual power… this will be their first lesson in defeat.”

And, on the evening of the 29th of December last year, they did come. Armed riot police stormed the snowy complex. As their flashing blue lights lit up the hand-painted murals of saints which adorn the white walls of the convent buildings, officers from Russia’s national guard detained Romanov and his deputies.

By morning, he had been bundled into a plane and flown westwards to Moscow, where a court read out the charges – encouraging his followers to kill themselves, violating their basic rights and causing outrage to religious believers across the country.

Just months before, the local archbishop had accused him of vanity, lying and suffering from “schizophrenic delirium” as part of a dispute with Church officials, who he branded heretics and denied access to the monastery. The breakaway convent had also been plagued by allegations from former students that drug-addicted monks were plying teenagers who lived there with narcotics, as well as subjecting them to corporal punishment and abuse. After a 15-year-old girl died at the monastery last year detectives launched a probe.

Around the same time, three young people who had been involved with the church told popular TV journalist Ksenia Sobchak that they had been beaten with electrical cord, and locked in a shed without food. She and her camera crew were chased away by Romanov’s followers as they tried to gain entry to the complex while filming a documentary, and her director was left with a broken wrist.

The monastery and its enigmatic priest have captured the imagination of Russians, with the media uniformly portraying the church as a shadowy sect. Pictures of Romanov looking bedraggled and hauled up in front of court have made the front pages. Little has been said, though, of the people that said they would follow Romanov to the grave.

VICE World News met one of those followers, “Elena,” outside a KFC in Ekaterinburg, before driving out to one of Romanov’s former monasteries. She’d agreed to show us around one of the country’s holiest sites, speaking on the condition that her name be changed, to avoid drawing unwanted attention from the authorities or criticism from others in the church.

If alleged death cults are supposed to attract a certain type of person, Elena probably wouldn’t fit the mould. With a good job and a young family, her eyes lit up when she said how she’d started attending church because of the 66-year-old branded online as “mad Sergei” (a reference to the “mad monk” nickname given to Rasputin), and how she’d struggled since the monastery was shuttered by the authorities.

“When I first went to him, I felt love from him,” she said as we sped down the highway. “I felt he cared for people and helped them. I had some problems, and I didn’t have to tell him. He knew straight away.”

We were driving to Ganina Yama, a collection of wooden churches and shrines built around a colossal pit out in the woods. The former mineshaft is said to be the spot where communist revolutionaries dumped the bodies of the Romanovs, Russia’s last royals. In 1918, as loyalist forces closed in on Ekaterinburg, the family were taken down to the basement of the house where they had been imprisoned, and executed by their drunken guards. The bullet-ridden corpses of Tsar Nicholas II, his wife and children, were pushed down the shaft, before the Bolsheviks poured in acid and blew it up.

In death, the family has taken on a mythical status for many Orthodox Christians, especially those who followed Romanov. A steady stream of coaches and minibuses ferry religious Russians to the quiet forest shrine each week, where pilgrims can kneel on a platform in front of the pit and chant prayers, their voices carrying through the trees. “We are praying not just for the Romanovs,” one worshipper told VICE World News, “but for the forgiveness of all Russians. We’ll never know who carried out the murders, so we pray for all of our ancestors.” The royals were given sainthoods by the Church not long after the fall of Communism and, for many believers, the slaughter of the head of the Orthodox faith and his innocent children marked the start of eight decades of oppressive, atheistic Soviet rule.

By a strange twist of fate, before becoming a monk and taking on a new name, Father Sergei had been born Nicholas Romanov – just like the last Tsar himself. A former Soviet police investigator who dramatically fell from grace in the uncertain times before the implosion of the USSR, Romanov confessed to an armed robbery and the murder of a man in 1985. He claims he found faith while sentenced to 13 years behind bars in a special prison colony for law enforcement officers.

A year before he was sentenced, Romanov was involved in a car collision while committing a crime, killing one person and leaving him hospitalised in a coma for three days. According to Elena, that planted the seeds for his conversion, and “he only started to believe in God after he was involved in the crash.” While technically his criminal convictions should have blocked him from the priesthood, Romanov claims that the then-head of the Orthodox Church, Patriarch Alexey II, personally waived the rules and welcomed him as a reformed man. As religious leaders worked to regain their flocks after years of Soviet repression, the newly ordained monk was conveniently positioned as the model of a sinner who had seen the light, and quickly moved up through the ranks to preside over his own congregation.

Inspired by a near-death experience, infatuated with the murdered Romanovs and with a congregation pledging their willingness to die, the priest has struggled to shake off the morbid reputation he has gained in recent years. Elena, however, denied that the group has an unhealthy obsession with suicide, as prosecutors allege. “When Russians join the army, they pledge they are ready to die for the country. So why is it different when it’s about God?” she asked.

However, their apathy towards the mortal world seems to have made the group a threat in the eyes of officials since the start of the pandemic last year. Romanov stood almost alone among religious leaders when he defied orders to suspend his sermons and encourage mask-wearing to prevent the spread of the virus. “All the problems began in the time of Covid,” Elena sighed. “Before, everything was OK, but he said he wouldn’t listen to the government. We believe in God, so how can we be afraid of Covid?” she added. “We believe that even if you die, you will be OK… it is God’s will.” Romanov was also belligerently opposed to government efforts to convince priests to encourage their flocks to sign up for the vaccine.

While Elena insists the church’s teachings aren’t far outside the mainstream, she acknowledges that their piousness can seem strange to outsiders. “Some people don’t like him of course – for example we took our friends and they were afraid because when he prayed, some people started screaming – speaking in tongues. And they were like ‘oh God,’ they weren’t ready for this, it was too much. They thought it was a cult.” Stories of parents searching for children who had run away to sign up with the group haven’t helped its reputation locally either.

Now, former members of the church claim the authorities are monitoring them to make sure they don’t regroup in Romanov’s absence, with the most devoted of his followers put out on the street.

Although the charges their spiritual leader is facing stem from his supposed mistreatment of followers and calls for them to kill themselves, Elena says the authorities were more worried by how strongly the church’s members felt about him and the fact the breakaway group had rejected control from senior bishops. “I think they are afraid people will break the law, because Romanov says a lot of bad things about the government, and they’re worried that it is dangerous for society, like we will start some kind of revolution,” she said. “But it isn’t true – we won’t do this. We will never start an insurrection.”

One top Orthodox clergyman, Moscow Deacon Andrei Kuraev, however, warned last year that even if the monk’s teachings are peaceful, it is his personal hold over his congregation that is potentially dangerous. According to the church official, Romanov was more interested in being adored by his supporters than living a humble, godly life. “A monk is someone who says I am shit, and you can walk over me like a doormat,” he told local media as the case made headlines. Romanov, however, “has nothing like this in his face, intonations, eyes or behaviour. He feels like a Fuhrer who is ready to lead everyone.”

According to Professor Nikolai Shaburov, one of the country’s leading religion experts, describing the group as a “cult” is not helpful in understanding them. “The terms cult and sect are best avoided altogether, since they’re basically pejorative terms and have lacked all meaning,” he says. Instead, he said, Romanov’s group is better understood as a “new religious movement” within the Orthodox Church, made up of highly-motivated young people looking for inspiration. “The peculiarity in Russia is the fact that these groups are becoming more influential in society,” he said, adding that “it is common for the authorities to take a negative view towards them.”

One of the problems, he went on, is that top bishops take a dim view of individuality in local preachers. “The Russian Orthodox Church isn’t known for its tolerance”, Shaburov says. The row with leaders over his refusal to suspend sermons and encourage mask wearing in 2019, as well as his harsh criticism of top bishops, could also play a role. “I note that Father Sergei was accused of authoritarianism only after conflict with the Church leadership,” Shaburov added.

Cult or not, as the controversial monk languishes in a Moscow jail cell awaiting trial, his followers have been left trying to pick up the pieces and trying to keep their community together, while praying the court finds him not guilty later this year. In the meantime, though, like the Romanovs, Sergei has become just another holy figure, taken away from them too soon.



https://www.vice.com/en/article/88nywg/the-covid-denying-tsar-loving-russian-cult-thats-too-extreme-for-putin

Russia moves to ban 'undesirable' Church of Scientology groups

Reuters

September 24, 2021

MOSCOW, Sept 24 (Reuters) - Russia declared two organisations linked to the Church of Scientology "undesirable" on Friday, paving the way for the group to be formally banned.

The Prosecutor General's Office said the World Institute of Scientology Enterprises International and the Church of Spiritual Technology, which are both based in California, were "a threat to the security of the Russian Federation".

Russia has banned more than a dozen foreign groups under legislation against undesirable organisations, adopted in 2015. Under the law, groups are typically first labelled undesirable and then formally banned by the Justice Ministry.

Russian authorities have moved against the Church of Scientology in the past. In 2016, the Supreme Court ordered the closure of the group's Moscow branch. The Justice Ministry has also declared some of the group's literature extremist.

Scientology was founded in 1954 by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, and describes itself as a religion.

The group's critics say it is a cult and have accused Scientologists of harassing people who seek to quit. The church denies such allegations.

Reporting by Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber; Editing by Gareth Jones

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-moves-ban-undesirable-church-scientology-groups-2021-09-24/

CultNEWS101 Articles: 7/14/2021

Lev Tahor, Guatemala, Legal, Abuse, Buddhism, Benjamin Creme, Russia, Legal, Grigory Grabovoi

Jerusalem Post: US, Guatemalan forces raid extremist haredi Lev Tahor cult compound

"US and local Guatemalan police have begun raiding the compound of the extremist ultra-Orthodox (haredi) cult, Lev Tahor, arresting at least three top officials in the cult, Globes reported on Tuesday evening.

Another reporter for Globes reported that cult-members Yoel and Shmuel Weingarten have been arrested.

US and Guatemalan forces have performed several raids on the cult's leaders and members in recent years, mainly for kidnapping and child abuse charges, arresting their leader Yaakov Weinstein last March. In 2019, four members were indicted for kidnapping two children whose mother had taken them, wanting to return the children to Lev Tahor.

The sect has been accused of forcing girls as young as 12 years old into marriages with much older men within the sect."

Medium: The Goodness of a Cult Comes from Those it Abuses

That ideal façade is often built by people trying to survive

"When I report on institutional abuse in yoga and Buddhism I always discover that survivors were stripped of time, security, money, earning potential, educational opportunities, social status, family bonds, bodily autonomy and inner dignity. I hear stories of endless hours of unpaid labour, undertaken with the promise of salvation. I hear from members who were raped by leaders who told them it was for their spiritual good. They describe being silenced by enablers.

These details constitute the cultic crime scene. An organization has exploited its members, and left human wreckage. Their stories can be told, corroborated, fact-checked, and published. Innocent and earnest members of the organization will hope that accountability is possible, so that what they remember being good and wholesome about the organization can be salvaged.

But a bitter irony curdles this desire. So much of what an earnest group member will be nostalgic for — the beautiful singing, the communal meals, the tidy accommodations and lovely gardens — came from the organization's encouragement and exploitation of the skills of those it abused.

This organizational capital isn't limited to songs and salad greens and sandwiches. In many cases, it also informs the core content of the group. In the two cults I survived, it was unpaid cult members who transcribed, edited, published, and distributed all of the cult literature."

Mathew Remski: The Edgelord Lama

"To understand how a worldly and sophisticated 60 year-old Bhutan-born Buddhist lama starts shitposting about #metoo, we need some background and nuance. Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche isn't your typical 4chan troll. He's on a mission to defend a global spiritual industry that's crumbling under the weight of its abuse revelations. Somehow, he believes that cloaking the presumption of ancient spiritual superiority in victim-blaming jokes and memes is a good strategy."

Medium: Growing up as a child in Benjamin Creme's Maitreya Cult

"I would like to explain my mother's background to understand why she joined a cult, and why, as her only child, this was my upbringing. My mother was born in 1946 and grew up in a tiny apartment block near the centre of communist Budapest. She and her parents were crowded together in one room, living in poverty. They would argue daily. Her mother beat her physically every day and her father had become chronically ill after my grandmother had been hiding him in a damp cellar so he could avoid the persecution of the Nazis (since he was Jewish). When my mother was only 17, her mother married her off to a French man, so she would be able to leave the communist-controlled country. She lived in great poverty in Paris, barely having enough to eat, and then divorced him. At one point, she moved to London, where she has stayed ever since, eventually marrying my father.

My father was born to a middle-class family with both parents who had fought in World War II. They were also relatively dysfunctional as a family, in that his father was always very cold with his two boys. My father is a good man, but he is 'damaged' in that, in his own words, he is 'unable to feel joy.' My father's mother had become a numbed-out alcoholic since she was in an unhappy marriage (she overcame this in her old age after my grandfather died). For this older generation, divorce was frowned upon, and alcoholism would have been the only escape.

During the cult happy 1970s, it is of no surprise then that my parents, along with the rest of their generation, were desperate to find a better way of life. Some of them were trying to create utopias and communes under the guidance of various charismatic cult leaders. So, when my mother saw Benjamin Crème's advert in the newspaper that 'Maitreya is now in the world', for her, it was a call that spoke to a deep sense of a need to belong and to feel as if there is a purpose for being here. This was felt by many of her generation who joined spiritual cults, as they were searching for something radically different from the war-torn misery of their parent's generation. Looking back had I not known what I know now, and had I been in their shoes, I might have joined in also! Who, I wonder, is not consciously or unconsciously looking for 'belonging' and the love we seem to have lost?

His group was harmless in an outward way, but for me, unfortunately, it was not harmless. It was harmless outwardly in that there was no physical abuse, because I can tell you that Benjamin Creme absolutely believed everything he was saying and his intentions were good towards all groups of people inclusively. He really wanted to help save the world for all people equally. Cults become harmful outwardly when the leader is doing what he is doing for self-interest — and that was not Ben.

Yahoo News: A cult leader was imprisoned in Russia for promising mothers he could resurrect their massacred children. 13 years later, his 'cheat codes for the universe' became a TikTok obsession.

"@kai.metal.billy said he turned a $700 crypto investment into $25,000 within two days. @victoriagross said her dad transferred her more money than expected. @soulfulxistence said she found $20 in her car.

It looked like everyone was getting lucky. But they weren't calling it luck.
Like thousands of TikTokers, they were putting their good fortune down to Grabovoi codes, or Grabovoi numbers - a pseudoscience based around seemingly random strings of numbers.
Some called them "cheat codes for the universe."

The sequences supposedly "create a frequency at the vibratory and energetic level to positively affect situations and structures that are part of our lives," Edilma Angel Moyano, a self-styled Grabovoi follower, said in a 2018 book about the codes. The science behind this is - to say the least - unclear.

There are codes for "unexpected money" (5207418898, per Moyano), good skin (55942833), weight loss (55942833), and even a formula for protection from mosquitoes (55942833 combined with 694713). And yes, there's one for eternal life.

Like many TikTok trends, it's fun, and costs nothing to try. But it's the brainchild of a man with a dark history.
Who is Grigory Grabovoi?

Grigory Grabovoi is a Kazakh faith healer who rose to prominence amid the complex politics of post-Cold War Russia.

Some 17 years before his "codes" became a TikTok trend, Grabovoi and his followers were, prosecutors said, promising grieving mothers he could resurrect their children for a fee of $1,200. (Grabovoi denied charging money, reported Rapsi, a Russian legal news site.)

According to his website, Grabovoi graduated as a mathematician in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, in 1986, and quickly put together a busy résumé. It included selling services in "extrasensory diagnostics" to Uzbekistan's national airline, where he claimed to correctly predict the engineering issues of 360 flights.

This appeared impressive in Boris Yeltsin's Russia. There were press reports of the then-president charging Grabovoi with keeping his plane in the air through telekinesis by the late 1990s, Eduard Kruglyakov, the head of the country's Commission on Pseudoscience, told the Regnum news agency in 2005."

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