(Minghui.org) As the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to escalate its transnational persecution of Falun Gong, a Moscow court sentenced a Russian practitioner to four years of imprisonment on July 23, 2025. The U.S. State Department condemned the sentence and urged Russia to respect freedom of belief.

Natalya Minenkova does the Falun Gong exercises in a Moscow park on July 5, 2022.

According to The Epoch Times, Natalya Minenkova had been raising awareness of the persecution of Falun Gong in China. She felt pained that her own country had become a tool of the CCP’s suppression of Falun Gong.

Minenkova, 47, was detained for one year before the sentence on July 23, 2025, under a controversial 2015 law that critics say allowed politically motivated prosecutions targeting international nonprofits. One day before the sentence, Russian authorities in Siberia raided the home of another Falun Gong practitioner and confiscated the person’s phone and laptop.

State Department Condemns the Repression of Falun Gong in Russia

“The United States condemns the Russian government’s actions targeting and repressing members of religious minorities, including Falun Gong practitioners,” a State Department spokesperson told The Epoch Times.

“We urge Russia to respect the right of all to exercise the freedom of religion or belief. All religious minorities should be able to enjoy freedom of religion and assembly without interference.”

U.S. Representative: Russia Is Doing the CCP’s Bidding

U.S. Representative Chris Smith

Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), who co-chairs the Congressional–Executive Commission on China, said Russian President Vladimir Putin and CCP leader Xi have “entered into a marriage of convenience.”

“Russia is doing the bidding of the Chinese Communist Party, as evidenced by the repression directed at a peaceful Falun Gong practitioner,” Smith told The Epoch Times.

“Putin has made a bargain with the devil, to the detriment of the people of Russia—and to an innocent Russian, Natalya Minenkova.”

Besides Minenkova, Zhu Yun from Tomsk, Siberia, was sentenced to three years in prison on June 27 under the same law. In November 2024, Oksana Shchetkina from the city of Pyatigorsk in southern Russian received a two-year prison term due to her association with the nonprofit Friends of Falun Gong.

The controversial law, under which “carrying out the activities of an undesirable organization” is deemed a crime, was passed in 2015 and has been used by Russian authorities to target more than 100 organizations, as well as journalists and human rights activists.

“Completely Baseless Crackdown”

Asif Mahmood, vice chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom

Asif Mahmood, vice chair of the federal panel United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, told The Epoch Times that the sentencing of Minenkova and other Falun Gong practitioners is “yet another example of its expansive, completely baseless crackdown on individuals who ostensibly don’t align with Russia’s domestic or foreign policy objectives.”

He said the United States should re-designate Russia “as a country of particular concern and use its powerful voice to highlight the repression of religious groups in Russia, including Falun Gong practitioners.”

“Beneath Russia’s Sovereignty and National Dignity to Bow to Pressure from Beijing”

Levi Browde from the Falun Dafa Information Center

Levi Browde, executive director of the Falun Dafa Information Center, said the trend of punishing Falun Gong practitioners is “dangerous and deeply concerning.”

The fact that Minenkova was sentenced three days after a key Falun Gong anniversary, the 26th year since the persecution began in China, raises serious questions, he said.

“Whether intentional or not, the timing echoes Beijing’s playbook and signals a chilling alignment with its authoritarian repression,” Browde told The Epoch Times.

“It is beneath Russia’s sovereignty and national dignity to bow to pressure from Beijing to ban Falun Gong and imprison its own citizens. History will not look kindly on those who choose to collaborate with the Chinese Communist Party—the most brutal communist regime in the world today.”

Transnational Repression

Minenkova’s arrest in May 2024 occurred two weeks before a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, in which the two pledged a “new era” of partnership. Similar roundups of Falun Gong practitioners also took place in Serbia and Malaysia over the past year ahead of Xi’s trips to those countries. Browde said this reflected a “broader trend of transnational repression tied to Beijing’s reach.

“These incidents raise serious concerns that Moscow and other governments may be suppressing peaceful religious groups to align themselves more closely with Beijing—using repression as a form of diplomatic currency,” he explained.

Beyond the temporary detentions seen in Serbia and Malaysia, the situation in Russia seems particularly pressing—Moscow has listed seven Falun Gong-related organizations as illegal and has banned several Falun Gong-related publications, including the practice’s main book, Zhuan Falun, as well as a report on the CCP-sanctioned forced organ harvesting in China.

Becoming a Tool of the CCP

Minenkova, an assistant manager for a dental equipment supplier, has practiced Falun Gong for more than a decade.

“We tell the truth about the persecution of Falun Gong, and the CCP is afraid of this,” she told the court on July 23. “And here, in Russia, it is doing its dirty work with your hands, with the hands of investigators, prosecutors, FSB officers.

“No matter how long and carefully the law enforcement agencies search for evidence of the ‘crime’ for which I am being tried, they will not find it,” Minenkova said. “Because there is no crime and no guilt. And the law enforcement officers know this.”

She recounted Falun Gong’s popularity in China during the 1990s, when around 70 million to 100 million people began practicing for its physical and mental benefits. But in 1999, the CCP declared the practice its enemy upon deeming it a threat to the Party’s power, mobilizing a nation’s resources to eradicate them.

Minenkova credited Falun Gong for resolving her stomach issues, sore throat, and chronic tonsillitis. Her character has also improved because of the practice, she said. Her sister, whom she used to quarrel with constantly, once told her she had “changed a lot.”

Minenkova has written letters and attended medical forums and other events calling attention to the ongoing persecution of Falun Gong, including the forced organ harvesting in China targeting prisoners of her faith, she explained. This is because she can’t remain silent in the face of killing.

“It is very painful to see that my country, instead of protecting me from the persecution of the CCP and assisting in exposing torture, murder and forced organ harvesting in China, is a tool in the hands of the CCP and persecutes its own citizens,” Minenkova added.

She said she believes in the universal principle that good is rewarded while evil is punished, even if not everyone else does.