Latest news with #Krasnoyarsk
The Independent
06-07-2025
- The Independent
Jesus of Siberia: The traffic cop turned cult leader who claimed to be the son of god — and will now spend 12 years in jail
Deep in a remote corner of Siberia, a group of masked men swarmed the City of the Sun, a deeply religious settlement in the Krasnoyarsk region. The Russian security forces had arrived in September 2020 to arrest the so-called Jesus of Siberia, a former traffic policeman known as 'Vissarion' who some viewed as the reincarnation of Christ. The religious leader, whose real name is Sergei Torop, was accused of extorting money and causing physical and psychological harm to his many of followers, some 10,000 worldwide. On Monday, nearly five years later, Torop's stint as a cult leader came to an end when he was convicted in a Siberian court and sentenced to 12 years in a maximum-security prison camp, along with two other sect leaders, Vladimir Vedernikov and Vadim Redkin. The 64-year-old bearded and long-haired mystic, who led the Church of the Last Testament, claimed that he had been 'reborn' to convey god's word to the world. Many of his devotees flocked to the settlement known as 'Abode of Dawn' or 'Sun City', soaking in Torop's teachings of reincarnation, veganism, and harmonious human relations. "It's all very complicated," he explained to a reporter for The Guardian in 2002."But to keep things simple, yes, I am Jesus Christ. I am not god. And it is a mistake to see Jesus as god. But I am the living word of God the Father. Everything that god wants to say, he says through me." Torop told his followers not to eat meat, smoke, drink alcohol or swear - and to stop using money. They would often hold prayers in his honour, looking up to his large hilltop residence in the City of the Sun. But it was a darker, hidden side to life in Vissarion's commune that led to his arrest. His apparent re-birth was followed by decades of psychological manipulation of his followers, exploiting them for labour and money from 1991 to 2020. Torop exerted control over his followers, prosecutors said, inflicting 'moral harm' on 16 people, leaving six with 'serious health problems'. 'There were these ridiculous situations when adults and children died because they didn't receive medical assistance,' Elena Melnikova, one of at least eight people who testified against Vissarion and his lieutenants in the year after his arrest, told the BBC. An anti-medical commandment was one of a number of regulations imposed by Vissarion which proved to be harmful to his followers. 'Know thyself. From now on, the flesh must heal itself. In most cases, illness is a punishment for the inability to keep one's flesh in harmony with nature,' Ms Melnikova said, recalling his teachings. Community leaders would beg for money for the community, she said. In some cases, people donated all of their funds, admitted Alexander Staroveroc, who acts as a press secretary for the City of the Sun. Along with Vedernikov and Redkin - jailed for 11 and 12 years respectively - Torop denied all wrongdoing, and it is unclear whether they will appeal their sentences. After their conviction, the court also awarded 45 million rubles (£417,000) in damages to the victims. Torop's journey as a spiritual leader began when he was 29 in 1990, the year he claimed he was reborn as Vissarion, claiming to be a returned Jesus Christ. Born in 1971 in the city of Krasnodar, which was then the Soviet Union, Torop's life until his turn to religion was a tale of toil. Stints in the Red Army, on building sites, in factories, and as a traffic policeman, ultimately led to bitter disappointment when he was made redundant from his latest role after five years of service. As he embarked on a spiritual path following his redundancy, Torop began drawing from elements of various religions: Russian Orthodox Church, Buddhism, and apocalypticism. He embraced veganism and began to adopt collectivist views and ecological values. It would be just two years before he founded the Church of the Last Testament in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia in just months before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The end of the world, Torop told his early followers, was imminent. Only those who observed his strict teachings would be saved. "He radiates incredible love," 57-year-old Hermann told The Guardian. "I met Vissarion last August. He told me we had to follow two laws. It was like an electric shock, like bells ringing." Denis, a 21-year-old Australian, said: "No doubt about it, mate. Definitely the Son of God." An entire new calendar was adopted based around moments in Vissarion's life: Christmas was replaced by a feast day on Vissarion's birthday, 14 January, while another feast day on August 18 was the largest, and originated from his first sermon in 1991. But following decades of worship of a self-professed messiah, his thousands of followers remaining in the remote corner of SIberia now live without their spiritual teacher. He is not due to be released until he is 76 years old.
Fox News
01-07-2025
- Fox News
'Siberian Jesus' sentenced to Russian prison after harming followers in bizarre cult
A Siberian cult leader who claims to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ was sentenced to 12 years in a Russian prison camp after his conviction for physically and financially harming his followers. Sergei Torop, a former traffic policeman known to his followers as "Vissarion," meaning "he who gives new life," and two aides used psychological pressure to extract money from his followers and cause serious harm to their mental and physical health, Reuters reported. Torop, 64, set up the Church of the Last Testament in a remote part of Siberia's Krasnoyarsk region in 1991, the year the Soviet Union broke up. He was one of three men convicted Monday in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk. Torop and Vladimir Vedernikov were sentenced to 12 years, and Vadim Redkin was sentenced to 11 years in a maximum-security prison camp. All three men were arrested in 2020 in a helicopter raid that involved the FSB security service, the successor agency to the Soviet KGB. A bearded self-styled mystic with long hair, Torop claimed to have been "reborn" to convey the word of God. He attracted thousands of followers, some of whom flocked to live in a settlement known as the "Abode of Dawn" or "Sun City" at a time when Russia was battling poverty and lawlessness, according to Reuters. He told his followers not to eat meat, smoke, drink alcohol or swear and to stop using money. Investigators said the men brought "moral harm" to 16 people, damage to the physical health of six people and moderate damage to another person's health. Vedernikov had also been accused of committing fraud, the RIA state news agency reported.
Russia Today
01-07-2025
- Russia Today
Russian ‘Jesus' sentenced to 12 years
A Russian court has sentenced Sergey Torop, a former traffic policeman who claimed to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, to 12 years in a maximum-security prison. Torop was convicted of causing psychological and physical harm to his followers and financially exploiting them. Torop, who goes by the name Vissarion, founded the Church of the Last Testament in 1991 in Russia's Krasnoyarsk region. The sect attracted thousands of followers with its strict lifestyle that bans meat, alcohol, smoking, swearing, and the use of money. Its members live as vegetarian subsistence farmers in remote Siberian settlements. The Novosibirsk court also sentenced Torop's aides, Vladimir Vedernikov and Vadim Redkin, to 12 and 11 years, respectively. All three denied any wrongdoing during the trial, and were ordered to pay 40 million rubles (around $511,500) in moral damages. The charges stem from activities between 1991 and 2020, during which investigators found that 16 individuals suffered moral harm, six sustained severe injuries, and one saw his health deteriorate due to the sect's practices. The movement came under legal scrutiny on two separate occasions in 2020. In February of that year, members of the church were interrogated as part of an investigation into corruption and fraud at the Istoki School, which is attended by the children of Vissarion's followers. Then in August, a criminal case was opened after representatives of the self-styled prophet prevented journalists from filming inside the community. In September, 2020 Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) raided and arrested Torop and several of his associates, following allegations of psychological pressure and financial exploitation within the sect. During the raid, police found a stash of jewelry, weapons, adult toys, and money, including rubles, dollars and euros. Officially registered in 1995 as a religious organization, the Church of the Last Testament was later dissolved following legal actions against its leaders. The sect gained international attention in 2012 when Vice News released a YouTube documentary titled Siberian Cult Leader Thinks He's Jesus.
Yahoo
30-06-2025
- Yahoo
Russia jails 'Jesus of Siberia' sect leader for 12 years for harming followers
By Andrew Osborn (Reuters) -A Russian sect leader who claimed he was Jesus Christ reincarnated was sentenced to 12 years in a prison camp on Monday after being convicted of harming his followers' health and financial affairs. Sergei Torop, a former traffic policeman known to his followers as 'Vissarion', set up the Church of the Last Testament in a remote but picturesque part of Siberia's Krasnoyarsk region in 1991, the year the Soviet Union broke up. A bearded self-styled mystic with long hair, he claimed to have been "reborn" to convey the word of God and attracted thousands of followers, some of whom flocked to live in a settlement known as the "Abode of Dawn" or "Sun City", at a time when Russia was battling poverty and lawlessness. Torop, 64, told his followers, who regularly intoned prayers in his honour as they looked up to his large hilltop residence, not to eat meat, not to smoke, not to drink alcohol or swear, and to stop using money. But the Investigative Committee, Russia's equivalent of the U.S. FBI, accused Torop and two aides of using psychological pressure to extract money from his followers and of causing serious harm to their mental and physical health. In a statement on Monday, a court in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk said it had convicted the three men, sentencing Torop and Vladimir Vedernikov to 12 years and Vadim Redkin to 11 years in a maximum-security prison camp. They were also ordered to pay 40 million roubles ($511,500) to compensate their victims for "moral damage". All three denied wrongdoing. Torop and the two aides were arrested in a security forces raid by helicopter in 2020 that involved the FSB security service, the successor agency to the Soviet KGB. According to the RIA state news agency, investigators said the men had caused "moral harm" to 16 people, serious damage to the physical health of six people, and moderate damage to another person's health. Vedernikov, one of the aides, had also been accused of committing fraud, RIA said. In a 2017 BBC documentary, filmmaker Simon Reeve interviewed Torop, who denied any wrongdoing. The film showed how school girls whose parents were his followers were being educated to be what a local teacher called "future brides for worthy men." ($1 = 78.1955 roubles)
Irish Times
21-06-2025
- Business
- Irish Times
Perfect Storm by Thane Gustafson: A thorough study of the use and abuse of sanctions on Russia, and what could happen next
Perfect Storm: Russia's Failed Economic opening, the Hurricane of War and Sanctions and the Uncertain Future Author : Thane Gustafson ISBN-13 : 9780197795682 Publisher : Oxford University Press Guideline Price : £22.99 The first time I saw Apple Pay in use was in 2016 in a cafe in Krasnoyarsk, where teenage Siberians were simply holding up their iPhones to pay for coffee and pastries. Very impressed, I downloaded the Apple Pay app when I returned to Dublin and went to use it in an upmarket Grafton Street store. 'I don't know what that is,' said the baffled assistant. It was some time before we in Ireland caught up on the tech-savvy young Russians. Then things went into reverse. After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, Zoom and other western online transaction and communication companies withdrew their services from Russia as a 'hurricane' of sanctions was imposed, mainly by the United States, the UK and the European Union. Cafe-goers and shoppers had to revert to credit cards and cash. No longer could Russian-issued Visa and Mastercard cards be used for international payments or at stores and ATMs outside Russia. The Russian financial system had been fully integrated into the world of global telecommunications and international money: now, because of the war, the rouble is no longer fully convertible in global markets and global financial services such as Swift, essential for international financial transactions, have been withdrawn. Hundreds of western companies that supplied Russia have pulled out, including McDonald's , which created a sensation when its first store opened in Moscow on January 1st, 1990, (I was in the queue) and Starbucks, Carlsberg, Danone, Unilever and Ikea. READ MORE Today, however, Russia is rolling out its own Bluetooth-based contactless payment system, and city stores are well stocked with Apple products, and are even taking orders for Apple's new Vision Pro goggles, which will not be launched in the UK or Ireland until later this year. Initial fears among Russian consumers – that being turned into a pariah nation would mean their favourite western products in the supermarkets would all disappear – have long since been dispelled. Hundreds of western companies have stayed, including Mars , which makes Snicker bars – so popular that the conversion of people to western tastes is sometimes referred to as the Sneakerisation of Russia. McDonald's restaurants are still everywhere, under new management and rebranded as Vkusno i tochka, 'Tasty and that's it'. As sanctions piled up, a documentary made in Iran by popular YouTube host Alexey Pivovarov went viral: it showed Tehran stores bustling with sanctioned products and locally made imitations. It assured Russians that western sanctions could be busted, despite being on a scale never attempted before against so large a country, and one so integrated into the world. From the start, sanctioned products have flowed into Russia. Consumer items are relabelled and rerouted through intermediary countries such as China, India, Turkey and Georgia. Traders in this grey market use shell companies and pay in cryptocurrencies to bypass financial controls. The EU's sanctions envoy, David O'Sullivan , described by the author as 'one of Ireland's most respected statesmen', spends much of his time travelling to the Middle East, Central Asia and East Asia to ensure as far as possible that sanctions are implemented. In December, O'Sullivan told Jack Power of The Irish Times how a sanctioned item 'goes from a factory in Europe to somewhere relatively innocent, then ends up [elsewhere] in our neighbourhood, and maybe the Gulf, then maybe Asia and finally maybe Russia.' Gustafson, a professor of government at Georgetown University, ventures that it is perhaps no coincidence to find 'a phalanx of Irish nationals' in FISMA, the EU's lead department for financial regulation, including Mairead McGuinness, who until last year was EU commissioner for financial stability, financial services and the capital markets union. He maintains this is partly because of the vigorous development of the financial industry in Ireland and the favourable tax regime of which Russian companies and banks took advantage before the invasion of Ukraine. Dublin had become a hub for borrowing by Russian entities through so-called 'special purpose vehicles'. After February 2022, the Russian banks and firms abruptly vanished, leaving the lenders with a raft of non-performing loans. Ireland-based aircraft leasing companies, which provide more than 60 per cent of the aircraft flying around the world, also suffered 'immediate and massive losses'. Sanctions required western lessors to terminate leases with Russian airlines, and by mid-2023 some $10 billion in leased aircraft was tied up in Russia. Some have since been bought out, but hundreds remain in limbo. The author, an expert on the geopolitics of energy, is particularly interesting on the impact of sanctions on the global oil industry. An oil embargo and price cap were imposed to curtail Russia's oil revenues, though without cutting the volume of exports, as this would squeeze world oil supply and set off a spiral of higher prices. Russia responded by acquiring a large fleet of second-hand tankers which sail under flags of convenience, and by giving mainstream tankers false flags. This scheme has several flaws, he points out: Russia's acquisition spree has caused the price of old, retired tankers to soar; many port authorities are reluctant to accept tankers without mainstream shipping insurance, which they cannot get; and flagging services are mostly outsourced to US companies. [ Is Russia's war-driven economy approaching its 1989 moment? Opens in new window ] But the combination of shadow tankers and attestation fraud has helped Russia maintain pre-war levels of exports. It has also moved its oil trading business from Switzerland to the United Arab Emirates, which does not sanction Russia, and which accepts Russian refined products for export to Europe, labelled as Emirati oil. The author's key proposition is that much of the sanctions regime is being circumvented, and the Russian economy is relatively stable, but if the sanctions are maintained and vigorously enforced, they will have increasingly severe long-term impacts on the Russian economy, causing its gradual degradation. This is because they have increased Russia's debt, reduced transparency and created new vulnerabilities. Russian banks are finding it harder to process foreign transactions and import-export settlements; Russian companies have lost access to western credit markets and can no longer use debt to finance investments; and half of Russia's foreign exchange reserves in foreign currencies have been blocked. [ Unfinished Empire: Russian Imperialism in Ukraine and the Near Abroad by Donnacha Ó Beacháin; and Putin's Sledgehammer by Candace Rondeaux Opens in new window ] Russian money-laundering through financial capitals such as London has also been severely curtailed, oligarchs' yachts have been seized or detained, and the assets of Russian banks, individuals and entities in the West have been frozen. In the words of Alexandra Prokopenko, a former adviser at the Russian Central Bank (not a former director as described in the book), 'Putin's military adventure in Ukraine and the sanctions have not made a breach in Russia's economic fortress, but they put a time bomb under its foundations'. Crucially, the reputation of Russia as a promising market, where foreign businesses were welcomed and risks could be managed, has been shattered. The seizure of assets of companies leaving Russia, such as Carlsberg, has only deepened the mistrust in Russia's market economy, which the author believes is already 'hobbled by a deeply corrupt state and leadership'. Gustafson writes from the perspective of 35 years studying and travelling in Russia and the former Soviet Union. He examines the impact of the perfect storm of war and sanctions in the context of Russia's three decades of opening to the world after the fall of communism in 1991. The first saw non-Russian-speaking consultants arrive to lecture Russians on how the market worked and the subsequent madness and mayhem of the Wild East; then, after the turn of the century, disposable incomes reaching unprecedented heights as oil prices soared and society stabilised; and the third was the start of sanctions after Russia's seizure of Crimea in 2014, which has culminated in the final failure of Russia's opening to the West. Once again Russia is isolated from the West, but unlike during the cold war, the enemy is no longer the Soviet Union but Putinism, 'a perverted blend of vengeful Russian imperialism, kleptocracy and a distorted reading of history'. Perfect Storm is a thorough, informed study of the use and abuse of a scattershot economic weapon that falls somewhere between jaw-jaw and war-war. The author ends on an upbeat note: there could be a second reopening of Russia to the West after Putin, even if it faces a wall of mistrust, and continues to remodel itself on China, as the United States turns in upon itself. Let's hope he is right. Conor O'Clery is former Moscow Correspondent of The Irish Times Further Reading Punishing Putin: Inside the global economic war to bring down Russia by Stephanie Baker (HarperCollins, 2024): A colourful account by a Bloomberg journalist of how the United States and its allies embarked on a world-changing financial experiment, from fixing oil prices to seizing superyachts, to thwart Putin's war of aggression. Economic War: Ukraine and the Global Conflict between Russia and the West (Hurst, 2025) by Maximilian Hess: A close look at Russia's response to western sanctions, and the ensuing skirmishes in London's courts, on Swiss trading desks and in boardrooms in New Delhi, as pipelines, mines, loans and crypto markets were weaponised. The Russia Sanctions by Christine Abely (Cambridge University Press, 2023): An expert on sanctions law examines how sanctions on Russia affect, in novel ways, global trading patterns, the world financial system and foreign policy. Makes the case that sanctions should be maintained, strengthened, and better enforced.
