A Pentecostal church in Russia was fired upon with automatic weapons

January 25, 2014 · Adam Bondaruk, Baptists, Victor Belykh, AUCECB, Persecution, Interview, KGB, Books, Unregistered Pentecostals, Nikolay Kotyakov, On Emigration, United Church of Evangelical Christians, Vestibule, Petr Saenko, Pentecostals, Religious Mafia, Slavik Radchuk, Contemporary Persecution, Security Services

The building of the “Word of Life” church, part of ROSHVE — the Russian United Union of Christians of Evangelical Faith (Pentecostals), was fired upon with automatic weapons in Nizhnevartovsk.

“The incident occurred on Sunday morning, September 11. Church staff heard gunshots, presumably a short burst from an automatic weapon,” the press service of ROSHVE told the Interfax-Religion portal today.

Five bullet holes were found on the facade of the building. Two bullets pierced the double-glazed window, flew through the corridor, and penetrated the wall of the room housing the children’s Sunday school.

At that time, only church ministers were in the building, preparing for the Sunday service, which is attended by more than a thousand people. No one was injured.

Interfax does not yet have comments from law enforcement representatives regarding this information.

Meanwhile, the pastor of the “Word of Life” church, Bishop Vasily Vityuk, expressed his concern about the incident and doubt that the investigation would be conducted objectively, since it would be advantageous for the authorities to hush up the situation and present it as ordinary hooliganism.

Therefore, according to the pastor, the church will try to draw media attention to this situation, as this is not the first such incident. A few years ago, the church building was attacked with bottles of incendiary mixture, and the investigation ultimately led nowhere, reports the church’s press service.

This time, the concerns began to be confirmed, as the police arrived at the scene only four hours later. Law enforcement officers inspected everything, took notes, and advised them to contact the local district police officer.

As noted in the report, the shooting of the church building took place in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, where at the end of last summer, the district authorities had undertaken and partially carried out attempts to persecute various religious organizations.

When asked whether there is any connection between the previous attempt at persecuting religious organizations and today’s shooting of the church, Bishop Vasily Vityuk replied: “It is impossible to find any correlation between those persecution attempts and today’s shooting.”

“What is clear, however, is that no authority is interested in such things happening, but it must be understood that any thoughtless action or statement can have far-reaching and unpredictable consequences. If yesterday government officials declared that ‘sectarians must be driven out,’ today someone might think they have the right to shoot at them,” said Vasily Vityuk.

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