Putin’s punitive tactics with dissidents: “It has accelerated since the beginning of the war”

Dozens of citizens Russians are being subjected to mandatory psychiatric treatment due to their political opinionsas denounced a group of lawyers and human rights NGOs, a trend that, they claim, has accelerated since the beginning of the war in Ukraine.

The practice has echoes of a control method widely used in the Soviet Union and known as punitive psychiatry, Even if the current scale is well below that observed from the end of the 1960s until the beginning of the 1980s.

data from a expert international and two Russian human rights groupshas interviewed three Lawyers and has reviewed the materials of the cases of Two women activists sent by court order to undergo psychiatric evaluations in a hospital in Siberia. With all this, he has armed a complaint heartbreaking.

Women, whose stories are reported in detail for the first time, were released after a few weeks, But they described experience as a traumatic experience.

Yekaterina Fatyanova, 37, was hospitalized on April 28 of last year at the number 1 psychiatric hospital of the KKPND in her hometown, Krasnoyarsk, after being accused of discrediting the Russian armed forces by publishing an article in a small opposition newspaper that he directed in his free time. She was not the author of the article, who argued that the war in Ukraine was motivated by reasons .

While I was in the hospital she underwent painful, degrading and unnecessary proceduresincluding a Gynecological examinationhe wrote in complaint letters to the authorities, reviewed by Reuters.

Fatyanova was discharged from the hospital on May 27 after doctors determined, in a document seen by the British agency, which I had no disorders or mental illnesses. “I think the true purpose of putting myself there was the moral repression and isolation of societyPossibly as punishment for my active civic position, “he said.

“I think that the true purpose of putting on there was the moral repression and isolation of society, possibly as punishment for my active civic position”

Robert van Voren, Dutch professor and human rights activist who has been studying what he describes as the political abuse of psychiatry in Russia, said he had documented Around 23 cases of this type a year from 2022when the large -scale invasion of Ukraine began, compared to an annual average of around five between 2015 and 2021.

The Russian Ministry of Justice, the Human Rights Commissioner and Kremlin did not respond to requests for comments on the alleged use of psychiatry for political purposes. The Kremlin He says he does not analyze individual cases that pass through the criminal justice systemsince these are matters that compete for courts. KKPND Hospital No. 1 did not respond to a request for comments.

‘Disturbing’ escalation

In the Soviet era, Thousands of dissidents were hospitalized For political reasons, based on the premise that only a mental illness would oppose the communist state. Among the best known cases are those of the dissident Vladimir Bukovsky and Nobel Poet and Prize Nobel Joseph Brodsky.

Although it is well below that scale, the current trend is, However, “disturbing”Said Van Voren in an interview. Reuters had previously informed about the resurgence of other practices of the Soviet era during the Ukraine War, including citizen complaints of alleged dissidents.

In many other parts of the world, the use of mandatory psychiatric treatment has been decreasing and It is usually limited to violent criminal casesSaid Dainius Pure, a Lithuanian psychiatrist who served as the Special Rapporteur of the United Nations about the right to health.

Pure said the Erosion of democratic reforms in Russia had a “harmful impact on Russian psychiatry”warning that the use of psychiatrists designated by the State in judicial cases probably leads to decisions that serve the interests of national authorities.

In Russia, mandatory treatment “It is used again for political purposes, as in the time of the Soviet Union”, explained.

The Russian Human Rights Group (Nobel Peace 2022) has identified 48 personas that, he says, are currently receiving that treatment in cases with political motivations. Of these, 46 are hospitalized psychiatric patients and two receive outpatient treatment while they are in prison.

The most common charges against them were related to criticism of war. 13 of people had been prosecuted Under censorship laws Approved shortly after the Russian invasion, said the human rights group.

According to Memorial, the youngest person subject to mandatory psychiatric treatment for protesting against war He turned 20 at the hospital last week. He was investigated when he was adolescent In 2023 for asking permission to organize a manifestation against war and a court ordered its hospitalization in February last year.

Anastasia Pilipenko, a lawyer who has represented people under mandatory psychiatric treatment, told Reuters that He did not consider that “risky behavior in the form of public statements against war is a sign of mental disorder”. Pilipenko does not represent any of the people in this story.

Hospitalizations represent a small fraction of the total arrests and imprisonments for political crimesincluding those that manifest against war. According to the Russian OVD-INFO human rights group, since the large-scale invasion began, little More than 20,000 people of the cycle arrested for expressing a position contrary to war. Nails 1,155 people have been criminally accused.

For those admitted as psychiatric patients, additional trauma derives from the open nature of their detention and the fact that Your sanity is being questionedDijo from the front. “I question the value of what one thinks, because it is described as mental illness, and that has a very weakening effect”.

Memorial said that the person who was hospitalized for a longer time in a case with political motivations is Albert Gurdjian, hospitalized since 2017 after allegedly Publish online that justice officials were an organized crime group and that it would be good to “fly the yacht” of an entrepreneur close to President Vladimir Putin. Reuters could not contact Gurdjian to request comments.

“Punitive Psychiatry”

Krasnoyarsk journalist, Fatyanova, said in her complaints that she was taken to the KKPND Hospital No. 1 by FSB Security Service officers and that She was pressed to sign admission forms authorizing treatment and procedures without her consent informed and voluntary.

There, he said he had to resign from his main work in a management company because this He refused to grant him a license. It had also been farewell From a previous work in a transport company in December 2023 after the FSB began investigating it, he said in his complaints.

He said that sometimes patients They were denied the daily walks, they were given young bread and were often bothered by female shouts from another floor of the building.

The Ministry of Health responded by dismissing Fatyanova’s complaints. However, the regional health inspection reported in a letter of October 1, 2024 that He had warned to the hospital that he had to obtain the informed consent of the patients.

In December, Fatyanova was condemned by the newspaper article two years of forced labor, a form of punishment in which prisoners have to live in a shelter and perform tasks that mostly do not require any qualification, such as Collect garbage or clean the snow. The sentence has not yet entered into force, waiting for the appeals, he said.

While he was in the hospital, he met Olga Suvorva, 56, a prolific activist in social and environmental issues that told Reuters that she had also been subjected there to invasive and unnecessary tests Although, unlike Fatyanova, he refused to sign a consent form.

“This is punitive psychiatry”Suvorva said in a telephone interview. “The objective of all this is Datebelittle my contribution … and oppilme and make people no longer trust me. “

Case documents show that its developer is He owed to a criminal investigation that claimed that he had falsely accused an aggression police officer in October 2023. Suvorva says that the agent He mistreated. He supported his complaint with a medical report that showed hematomas that forced her to use a header for two weeks.

In December 2023, Suvorva was arrested in the case of false accusation at Krasnoyarsk airport after returning from a meeting In Moscow with Yekaterina Duntsova ,.

Suvorva refused to admit his misconduct and, by order of an researcher, was sent to two outpatient psychiatric evaluations. In a report, a doctor said he showed signs of “Mixed personality disorder”which included impulsive behavior and a “fixation in the desire to help To other people. “

For a greater investigation, a court sent Suvorva to KKPND No. 1 as a hospitalized patient, according to the documents reviewed by Reuters. Suvorva said that only after complain about the treatment received They discharged him after three weeks, with a medical document that indicated that No psychiatric disorder had been detected In it.

Suvorva acknowledged that during two appearances before the Court, in 2021 and 2024, He cut his arm publicly and made him bleed. He said that neither of them was seriously injured and that he had acted to denounce injustices.

“I choose methods that can attract attention”he states. “If there were real reasons to suspect that I suffer from a psychiatric disease, surely I would not have left the hospital“.

ORIPHAN RIGHTS

Ingvar Gorlanov, a 26 -year -old Siberia whose parents died when he was a child, was first sent to a psychiatric institution in 2019 when organized a single -person picket against the presidential administration in Moscowdemanding a meeting with Putin on the rights of orphans, according to his lawyer, Alexei Pryanishnikov.

Police arrested Gorlanov and took him to a hospital. A few days later, a court issued a sentence in favor of mandatory treatment.

Since then, Gorlanov has been sent to two other psychiatric hospitals after being arrested repeatedly, Pryanishnikov said Reuters. Is included in a Federal List of Terrorists and Extremistsaccused of crimes that include hatred and insults to a police officer.

Pryanishnikov said his client He was a normal person with a “great sense of justice” that does not represent any danger to itself or for others and that it should receive therapy instead of hospital treatment and antipsychotic medications.

Reuters has sporadically communicated by text messages with Gorlanov, admitted to a psychiatric center in his hometown, Novokuznetsk, since July 15. Gorlanov said that They allowed him to use his phone for 10 minutes on weekends. At the beginning of February, Gorlanov said he was still admitted there.

When asked what motivated him to continue protesting, Gorlanov replied: “The opportunity to contribute to change the country’s policy for better. “