ALEH NAHORNY, Orthodox Church (Minsk)

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Aleh Nahorny

Aleh Nahorny, an Orthodox faithful, publicist, a well-known researcher of sects in Belarus, author of the blog Sectologist On-duty, and editor of the site about sects, sekty.by. Nagorny studied at the Minsk Theological Seminary in Žyrovičy. He was a lecturer at many events and created — with the support of the Orthodox Church — the Center for the Protection of Health of Family and Person. The Christian Vision website frequently published his anti-war texts and his assessments of the political crisis in Belarus. He was detained on 8 November, but this only became known on 10 November 2022 when a so-called “repentant“ video with him appeared on the GUBOPiK (Ministry of Internal Affairs Department for Combating Organised Crime and Corruption; routinely used for political persecutions and violence) Telegram channel; there, Nahorny is referred to as a “sectarian” and accused of allegedly distributing “fascist symbols” (although Nahorny has consistently opposed extremism and radicalism). He is threatened with a criminal case for “inciting hostility towards the Russians”. He was sentenced to a 15-day administrative arrest under art. 19.10 of the Administrative Code (Propaganda or public demonstration, production, distribution of Nazi symbols or paraphernalia). It turned out that Employees of the Belarusian police told Nahorny that his prosecution was for anti-war publications and exposing the Z-ideology; a complaint about it was received in Russian law enforcement agencies. It should be assumed — based on the earlier threat of the Belarusian believer — that the author of the complaint was Nikolai Kuznetsov (hiding under the nickname Alexei Kirillin) writing for the Russian People’s Line.