A day after UCSJ reported that a Kremlin-sponsored youth group had launched a campaign against minority religions in the Chelyabinsk region, a newspaper in Tomsk reported a protest by a similar group, this time specifically against the Jehovah's Witnesses. According to a April 3, 2008 article in the local newspaper Vecherny Tomsk, members of "Nashi" held a protest outside a Jehovah's Witnesses "kingdom hall" on March 22. The article did not offer details about the protest, but it contained severa; attacks on the Jehovah's Witnesses within its text. For some reason, in her first paragraph, the author of the article referred to "Nashi"--an organization known for its worship of President Putin and intimidation tactics against opposition activists--as a "democratic movement." She then engages in a full fledged attack on the Jehovah's Witnesses, citing reports of anonymous victims, and not giving any space in her lengthy article for the Jehovah's Witnesses to respond. The article is full of phrases like "a trap for your soul," "the road to slavery," a "totalitarian mechanism of control over the consciousness" of their followers, "exploitation of their adepts," and ends with an appeal to readers to call with information about Jehovah's Witnesses activity, and to send any video or photographic material they can about them.

The author repeats the accusation voiced at the highest levels of Russia's security establishment in a national security council document at the beginning of President Putin's term that missionaries are trying to divide and weaken

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