PUTIN VISITS AUSTRIA; VOLUNTEER HELPERS OF RUSSIAN SPECIAL SERVICES RECALL MOSCOW PROPERTY OF AUSTRIAN JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES
"Representatives of the extremist organization of Jehovah's Witnesses have renewed their activity in Moscow. Dmitry Galochkin, the chairman of the Coordinating Council of Non-governmental Spheres of Security (NSB Russia), informed the prosecutor general of the RF, Yury Chaika, and minister of justice of the RF, Alexander Kovovalov, about this," an article in the official publication of Moscow city hall, "Tverskaia, 13," says.
The public organization, trying to imitate the methods of work of the special services, declared that, in an unidentified way, it had succeeded in getting information about the continuation of the activity of the "principal cultic structure" of Jehovah's Witnesses on Mikhalkov Street in the Northern Administrative District of Moscow. "Until the present time, representatives of a group of religious extremists, as previously, are conducting their activity at said address," the NSB activists maintain, "and they officially transferred the building at no cost to the ownership of the religious association of Jehovah's Witnesses in Austria."
According to an observer of Portal-Credo.ru, the Coordinating Committee of the NSB of Russia styles itself as a "hybrid of a labor union of retired security personnel and a structure that prepares conclusions for security organizations," while the conclusions and recommendations of the council are distinguished by their extreme ideological nature. Dmitry Galochkin was a member of the federal Public Chamber of the previous composition and at the present time he is actively concerned with religious problems, and in particular he undertook an attempt to assume for himself the role of arbiter in a property dispute of the central Moscow congregation of the Christian Church of Seventh-Day Adventists with the Russian Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists.
Putin's visit to Austria, which begins on 5 June, was timed to coincide with the jubilee of the bilateral Soviet-Austria gas agreement and it is occurring in circumstances where the current leadership of the Austrian republic is publicly raising the issue of ending the sanctions of the European Union against Russia, which were begun in 2014 and have been extended every six months.
As has often been reports previously, all 396 organizations of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia were ruled to be extremist and prohibited by the Russian Supreme Court in April 2017. (tr. by PDS, posted 5 June 2018)
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