Seven Ukrainian verdicts naming Jehovah's Witnesses over military service in five weeks

A Ukrainian court sentenced a Jehovah's Witness to five years' imprisonment on 3 September 2026 for leaving the army four days after he was mobilised. The post the army had assigned him, by order no. 346 of 19 November 2024, was cook in a supply section.^[1]

(English renderings of Ukrainian court text in this article are ours.)

The Stryi City-District Court of Lviv Oblast convicted him under Article 408(4) of Ukraine's Criminal Code — desertion committed under martial law, the emergency legal regime in force across Ukraine since 24 February 2022 — and did not suspend the term.^[1]

His is one of seven first-instance criminal verdicts naming Jehovah's Witnesses over military service delivered between 4 August and 7 September 2026 and published in Ukraine's register of court decisions, from seven courts in seven regions: Vinnytsia, Kyiv, Odesa, Kharkiv, Khmelnytskyi, Lviv and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts.^[2] First instance means the trial court, the first to hear a case, and each of these verdicts carried a thirty-day window in which to appeal. Only one of the seven — the Teplyk verdict of 4 August — is recorded in the register as having taken legal effect, on 4 September 2026, as the register stood on 12 September 2026.

Two patterns run through the set. Five men were prosecuted for evading call-up during mobilisation under Article 336, and each drew the same headline term — three years, four of the five suspended. Two were prosecuted as military offences, because the army had already taken them in before they left, and both drew five years, neither suspended.^[2]

What the Stryi court found

The man was mobilised on 19 November 2024, the same day a military medical commission certified him fit for wartime service. He was enrolled on the unit's rolls and posted to the kitchen. He left no later than 23 November 2024 and stayed away until he arrived at the State Bureau of Investigation's territorial office in Lviv on 22 September 2025.^[1]

He pleaded not guilty and asked to be acquitted. He told the court that he belongs to the religious organisation of Jehovah's Witnesses; that his beliefs do not permit him to serve in the armed forces, wear uniform, use a weapon or perform military duties; and that he has been appointed a minister in a Jehovah's Witness congregation. On his first call-up notice, in June 2022, he had gone to the recruitment centre in Mykolaiv, Lviv Oblast, explained his position and filed a written application for alternative (non-military) service — civilian work performed instead of military service — resting it on Article 35(4) of the Constitution. Detained by police in Stryi on 19 November 2024 and taken to the unit, he told the commander the same thing and said he was ready to do alternative service. During his four days there, he said, he did not regard himself as a serviceman, did not put on uniform and did not obey military orders. He was, he said, "ready to be useful to the state" and to apply his strength and abilities wherever the country needs them.^[1]

The court said it regarded that evidence as given in order to avoid criminal liability, and found his guilt fully proved by the unit's documents and by two men from the unit, each of whom said he had served about a week, refused to wear uniform, and explained the refusal by his religious beliefs.^[1]

Among the evidence the court listed was a negative service reference from his unit.^[1]

The single circumstance the court recorded as mitigating was the two minor children in his care. It separately noted that he was being prosecuted for the first time and was positively characterised where he lives. It found no aggravating circumstances, and imposed imprisonment within the range Article 408(4) provides.^[1]

The rule the courts are applying

All seven judgments rest on the same Supreme Court line. On 27 October 2025, in case No. 573/838/24, the joined chamber of the Cassation Criminal Court — an enlarged bench convened to settle disagreements between the court's own panels, in the division that checks lower courts for legal error — held that Ukrainian law allows no refusal of the duty to serve on call-up during mobilisation on religious or other grounds. Ukrainian law treats conscription (fixed-term peacetime service, which the Alternative Service Act lets a believer replace) and call-up during mobilisation as two separate kinds of service, and provides no substitution for the second. That gap, the joined chamber held, is a deliberate choice of the legislator; general mobilisation has the legitimate aim of defence against an aggression that threatens the nation's existence.^[1] Six of the seven judgments cite that ruling. The seventh, from Kamianets-Podilskyi, reaches the same conclusion by a different route, applying the Cassation Criminal Court's earlier ruling of 15 April 2025 in case No. 573/406/24.^[3]

The joined chamber attached a qualification, which the Stryi court reproduced:

It added that requiring an objector to submit to military command and to service rules unconnected with carrying or using weapons is not, on its view, a disproportionate interference with freedom of belief. On Strasbourg, it accepted the European Court of Human Rights' reading of Article 9 of the European Convention on conscientious objection, but held that conclusions reached in peacetime conditions could not be applied without qualification to Ukraine under full-scale invasion.^[1]

The Stryi court applied that conclusion. It found that "no insurmountable conflict exists" between the man's religious beliefs and his duty under Article 65 of the Constitution to defend the country, and that he had no factual or legal grounds for conscientious refusal. It recorded the defence's point that he had applied to the recruitment centre for substitution and that alternative service was never offered to him, and rejected it: he had been called up not for conscription, which can be replaced, but for service during mobilisation, for which the law provides no replacement. Citing the Cassation Criminal Court's ruling of 15 April 2025 in case No. 573/406/24, it held that martial law limits the right to manifest religion in so far as that concerns refusal of mobilisation. The duty to defend the country, it wrote, falls on all citizens of Ukraine irrespective of their faith; martial law is a weighty reason to require military duty of every citizen, "including Jehovah's Witnesses."^[1]

The Kamianets-Podilskyi court, sentencing a different man the day before, drew the weapons distinction concretely. Call-up during mobilisation, it wrote, does not automatically mean a man is obliged to take up a weapon: given his religious beliefs, he could be used repairing equipment, building fortifications, evacuating the wounded, transporting supplies "and performing other functions not connected with the use of weapons." Mobilisation, it added, may mean military duty performed outside combat altogether — "for example the performance of the duties of a driver, a cook, an equipment repairman."^[3]

Five call-up cases, five three-year terms

The five Article 336 prosecutions — evading call-up during mobilisation — each ended in a three-year term. Four were suspended under Article 75 of the Criminal Code, which lets a court release someone from actually serving a prison sentence on probation, subject to duties under Article 76. All four men were ordered to report periodically to the probation service and to notify changes of home and work; the individual orders differ on whether the man must also notify a change of study, or get agreement before leaving Ukraine.

• Teplyk District Court, Vinnytsia Oblast, 4 August 2026. Three years, suspended, one-year probation. The defendant said he had been a dedicated, baptised minister of the Religious Association of Jehovah's Witnesses in Ukraine since 2021 and, from 2024, a servant — a deacon — of his congregation, and that his beliefs did not permit him to take up a weapon or to deprive anyone of life given by God. He had applied in writing for non-military service. As the register stood on 12 September 2026, this was the only one of the seven recorded as having taken legal effect, on 4 September 2026.^[4]
• Obukhiv District Court, Kyiv Oblast, 5 August 2026. Three years, suspended, one-year probation. A Witness since 1994. In evidence was a certificate from the Religious Organisation "Religious Centre of Jehovah's Witnesses in Ukraine" recording him as a dedicated and baptised minister. He told the court he did not intend to evade his civic duty.^[5]
• Rozdilna District Court, Odesa Oblast, 28 August 2026. Three years, suspended, three-year probation. He pleaded not guilty. A certificate from the Religious Centre of Jehovah's Witnesses in Ukraine, dated 16 January 2025, records him as baptised from 3 August 2008; he told the court he was appointed a minister — a deacon — of his congregation on 28 July 2023. He had registered for military service in 2024 and been found fit. The court kept as evidence a DVD-R recording of his refusal to accept the call-up notice.^[6]
• Nemyshlianskyi District Court of Kharkiv, 2 September 2026. Three years, not suspended. He pleaded not guilty in full. A Witness since 25 June 2005 and a minister since autumn 2009, he attends congregation meetings twice a week and takes part in public preaching. On arriving at the recruitment centre he wrote to its head asking for military service to be replaced with alternative service, and applied elsewhere to the same effect.^[7]
• Kamianets-Podilskyi City-District Court, Khmelnytskyi Oblast, 2 September 2026. Three years, suspended, one-year probation. A minister since 2003, appointed in November 2009 by the governing committee of the Religious Centre of Jehovah's Witnesses in Ukraine; the court's sentencing paragraph describes him as an elder of his congregation, married, supporting a young son, and an internally displaced person. A defence witness, himself a Witness minister, testified that he had not refused service in general but had asked for it to be replaced.^[3]

The Kharkiv court set out why it would not suspend. Releasing people accused under Article 336 from punishment on probation, it wrote, "does not correspond to the principles and aim of sentencing, or to society's need at the present day. Active hostilities on Ukraine's territory continue, the enemy is not retreating and, on the contrary, is accumulating its forces … and mobilisation resources require constant replenishment." Probation, it added, would not fully secure the aim of deterring others. It imposed no restriction on the man pending the verdict taking effect, and set the term to run from the point the sentence is executed.^[7]

The two men already in uniform

The two five-year terms were imposed on men the army had taken in before they left, and were charged as military offences rather than as evasion.

The Stryi verdict is one. The other came from the Shevchenkivskyi District Court of Dnipro on 7 September 2026, under Article 407(5) — unauthorised abandonment of a unit or place of service. That man told the court he is a member of the religious organisation Jehovah's Witnesses and therefore cannot fight, his faith forbidding him to hold a weapon or perform military service. The court did not accept that he had shown it. It recorded that while in the unit he produced no documents in support of his membership, made no application to his commanders about his religious beliefs, and left without permission on 16 December 2024; and that the case file likewise contains no evidence that he supplied documents confirming membership. Invoking membership, it said, does not by itself relieve a serviceman of criminal liability for unauthorised absence of more than three days under martial law. He received five years. Because he was already under an earlier sentence — a 17,000-hryvnia fine imposed by another Dnipro court on 23 September 2025 for drug possession, an unrelated offence — the two were combined into a final sentence of five years plus that fine, with the term calculated from 14 November 2025.^[8]

That judgment also reproduces the Cabinet of Ministers list of religious organisations whose teaching does not permit the use of weapons — Resolution no. 2066 of 10 November 1999 — on which Jehovah's Witnesses appear alongside Seventh-day Adventists, Evangelical Christian Baptists and seven others.^[8]

What the wider counts say

The organisation is not a party to any of these seven cases. On 7 August 2026 jw.org published that "currently, 37 of Jehovah's Witnesses in that land are imprisoned for exercising their personal convictions and maintaining their Christian neutrality."^[9]

Forum 18, a specialist religious-freedom news service, keeps a list of such prosecutions. That list, dated 10 July 2026, reported more than 1,000 criminal cases launched against conscientious objectors of all faiths in Ukraine, about 500 of them already in court, and counted 31 objectors in jail serving sentences, seven awaiting appeal after conviction, 11 given probation or restricted-freedom sentences, at least 15 cases still being heard and 21 people in pre-trial detention. Jehovah's Witnesses are among those it names, alongside Seventh-day Adventists, Baptists and Orthodox believers. Citing a lawyer acting for Jehovah's Witnesses, it reported 1,091 criminal cases launched against Witness objectors as at 2 June 2026, 418 sent to court and 12 men sentenced. The same report records that Ukraine's Defence Ministry maintains the limited peacetime alternative service does not exist in wartime, and that a promised law to allow alternative service under martial law missed a June 2026 deadline.^[10] In April 2025 Forum 18 reported Witnesses' own figure of about 661 believers charged with evading mobilisation during 2024, and that alternative civilian service has been unavailable to those mobilised under martial law since the full-scale invasion began.^[11]

What the seven judgments do and do not show

Ukraine's register publishes court decisions with the names of defendants, judges and witnesses removed, so none of these men can be identified from the record.^[2]

The count of seven rests on judgments that name Jehovah's Witnesses in their text. A verdict that described a defendant's beliefs without naming the denomination would not appear in that set. Seven is therefore a floor for the five weeks from 4 August to 7 September 2026 as the register stood on 12 September 2026, not a census.^[2]

The Stryi verdict takes effect only if no appeal is lodged within thirty days of its delivery, or after the Lviv Court of Appeal rules on one. Until then the bail imposed on the defendant stands, and the five-year term runs from the point the sentence is executed — with the time he spent in custody, from 22 September 2025 to 16 January 2026, counted against it.^[1]