Punitive Psychiatry for a Dissident Janitor in Northern Russia: The Case of Igor Yakunichev

Five criminal cases have been launched against Igor Yakunichev, a resident of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District. In addition to three cases on charges of “disseminating fake news” about the Russian army and “condoning terrorism,” the security services added two more cases on the same charges. On 1 April, Yakunichev, who started the YouTube channel Infinity Is Not the Limit (about the lawlessness of the police and the courts), was forcibly hospitalized in a psychiatric clinic in the Tyumen Region.

Yakunichev’s relatives are convinced that he has been subjected to punitive psychiatry because of his consistent criticism of the current regime. For more than a year, investigators in Yamalia have tried to put Yakunichev in jail on charges of “disseminating fake news” about the military and “condoning terrorism.” However, even a court-appointed defense lawyer could not induce the 35-year-old Yakunichev to “admit everything and mitigate his plight” When the criminal cases began to fall apart, the defendant, who had no psychiatric diagnoses, was shipped off to a mental hospital.

“The police broke into our house twice”

The police started calling Igor Yakunichev and coming to his home (he lived with his mother and father in Pangody, a settlement in Yamalia with a population of 11,000) in early 2023.

Pangody, a village in Yamalia. Photo courtesy of Igor Yakunichev and Radio Svoboda

“They would bring a ‘warning’ for him to sign, or they would summon him for an ‘interrogation’ and question him about his videos and posts. He started the [YouTube] channel when his family was cheated out of their housing,” says Igor’s relative Tatyana (whose name has been changed for security reasons). “Mother and father and son had lived for many years in two rooms in a barracks. Under the dilapidated housing resettlement program they were given a one-room flat. Igor fought against this lawlessness for many years, and he and his mother traveled many kilometers going to the courts. All to no avail. Then he began not only to take an interest in the state system but also to make and post videos about what is going on in Yamalia. He had come head to head with the injustice of the system back in 2015, when he worked at the property management company Our House. Another property management company controlled by them, Garant, was going bankrupt at the time, but for some reason all the employees at Our House were forced to apply to work shorter days (apparently, the whole business was being optimized). Igor refused [to sign], and after three months they up and fired him. He sued them and was reinstated, but he was pressured into leaving anyway.”

The local administration disliked the fact that Yakunichev fought for his own and other people’s rights. Consequently, despite his specialized secondary education, he could only find work as a janitor.

“He helped other residents get their cases through the courts. He became very adept in these matters: he knew all the laws well, especially the Housing Code. But there was no work in Pangody. (Yakunichev graduated from a technical college and worked as a mechanic — Sibir.Realii.) He was promised a job at Gazprom—he is a good mechanic—but then they admitted that they had hired ‘one of their own people,’ meaning somebody’s relative. And that’s how everything goes here. At the time, the cronyism made Igor quite angry, not the fact that he didn’t get the job: his janitor’s salary was enough for him. And in fact, he was already a blogger: he had bought a good camera and set up a studio for editing,” says Tatyana.

All of the Yakunichevs’ expensive electronic equipment was taken away by the police during their first “hard visit.”

“In the summer of 2023, [the police] broke into [the Yakunichevs’ flat] for real and slammed Igor onto the floor. His mother screamed, ‘His spine is broken! Don’t throw him on the floor!’ But what they did care, they hit him as hard as they could. Igor has had an implant instead of one vertebra since he was a student. When he was studying at Omsk University, he lost his keys and climbed through the window in the dormitory. The balcony was dilapidated: it broke off and he fell on his back. Since then he has had a bunch of diagnoses: cervical, thoracic and lumbar osteochondrosis. And when he is worried, he can have a seizure, and it’s like impossible for him to breathe. And so they wrestled this very unwell man, who is practically disabled, and threw him on the floor. Interestingly, the camera that Igor turned on continued to record even after his fall and almost the whole ‘wrestling match’ was captured. Igor later returned from the police station, restored the recording, and posted it on [his YouTube] channel. It made the police squeal to the high heavens!” says his buddy Ivan (whose name has been changed for his own safety). “In the background you can hear them yelling wildly, ‘Hands! Hands on your head!’ Who are they yelling at? A disabled man. And [you hear] Igor asking, ‘The cats! Watch out for the cats!’ so they don’t trample his pets. It’s just brutal!

Igor Yakunichev’s video of the police raid on his family’s flat

After the police’s visit, Yakunichev learned that a criminal case on charges of “disseminating fake news” about the Russian army (per Article 207.3.1 of the Russian Federal Criminal Code) had been launched against him as early as late March 2023. He has published his first social media posts against the war at the very beginning of the war in February 2022.

“He reacted very harshly when someone would voice support for the war in his presence. He would not get into a fight, but he could try and persuade [the person] and talk [to them] until he achieved understanding or until he got tired himself. He was one of those people who never got used to the war. He understood the risks, but he still would stick his neck out. He vented everything to the policeman after [the latter] accused him of disturbing the peace at the [Russia Day] celebrations in June 2023. After [he said] these words about the unjust war with Ukraine, which he threw directly in the face of the ‘representative of the authorities,'” they targeted him specifically,” says Ivan. “They accused him of spreading ‘fake news’ about the army, threatening him with fifteen years in prison for posts on VKontakte about the Russian military’s crimes in Bucha. He and his mother filed complaints about the violations [of his civil rights], about how he had been roughed up during the arrest, how all their electronic equipment, even his mother’s computer and phone, had been cleaned out. Can you imagine, they still haven’t returned it!

As part of the first criminal case, the court banned Yakunichev from performing certain actions. In early March 2024, this case came to court. That was when it transpired that at least four more criminal cases had been launched against Yakunichev. Even prior to this, in the summer of 2023, Igor had been charged with an administrative offense for “discrediting” the army and fined thirty thousand rubles [approx. 300 euros]. Yakunichev and his family were notified about it.

“The grounds [for the charges] were ‘funny’: a video about a memorial featuring a T-54 tank in the village of Pangody. Local vatniks had drawn the letter Z on it. And Igor said in the video[‘s annotation] that it violated the law on the protection of cultural heritage objects,” says Tatyana.

Igor Yakunichev’s silent video condemnation of a WWII memorial in Pangody turned into a pro-war Victory Day display.

Then, in November and December 2023, according to Tatyana, two more criminal cases were brought against Yakunichev under the same article of the Criminal Code (Article 205.2.2, “condoning terrorism”). He faces up to seven years in prison if convicted on these charges.

“The grounds [for the charges] were videos about the Free Russia Legion ([in which a Legionnaire expresses] gratitude for donations in the fight against ‘Putinist Russia’) and about the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant. They weren’t even his own videos, but reposts of other media on his VKontakte page,” says Tatyana. “Later, we learned of the case launched under the article on repeated ‘discrediting’ of the army (Article 207.3.1), and then they seemingly merged it with one of the cases under Article 205 into a single proceeding. But the number of cases is frightening, don’t you agree? He regularly received notifications that one video or another had been removed from his page ‘by decision of the prosecutor’s office.’ He did not restore them: although he is a principled man, he was just tired and fed up.”

Free Russia Legion, “The Legion Returns Home” (2023)

His relatives are certain that Igor was deliberately driven to distraction with the interrogations and the notifications so that he would “blurt something out.”

“In June, the local beat cop showed up and made a completely delusional accusation. Allegedly, at the celebrations of Russia Day in June, [Igor] had been seen drunken in a public place and a complaint was filed against him. (That day, by the way, many people had seen him and testified that he was sober and orderly, so eventually the prosecutor’s office canceled this humiliating fine.) He videotaped this wannabe policeman, but he did not hold back and said everything he thought about this unjust war against Ukraine,” says a relative of Yakunichev’s. “I believe that this cop was the one who contributed testimony against him in the first case. Now it has gone to court, and Igor has been put away in a mental institution. Because they couldn’t put him under arrest: there was too little evidence of his guilt and ‘danger to society.’ But for some reason [the police] can take him to the madhouse themselves and obtain the court ruling retroactively. His mother has worn herself out filing complaints about such violations. It is urgent to replace the court-appointed lawyer with a normal one. Although [his mother] works as a cleaner, she is ready to pay all the money she has to a decent lawyer. Because the current one is a disaster: he hasn’t even been able to obtain a meeting with Igor once all month. [His family] receive paperwork about the cases against Igor months later, so they don’t know anything about the new cases against Igor.”

Igor Yakunichev’s confrontation with the local beat cop who showed up at his home to hassle him.

According to relatives, Yakunichev’s family is disappointed with the work of the court-appointed defense lawyer and now fears that Igor’s testimony will be extracted from him by torture in the psychiatric clinic, located in the village of Vinzili, Tyumen Region, a thousand kilometers from home.

“Read the reviews of the institution: former patients write such things it makes your hair stand on end—abuse and ill treatment by staff, medication administered without explaining to family and friends what the drug is and what it is used for,” says Ivan. “I think we need to get him out of there as soon as possible. Only a normal lawyer will help. By the way, this is not the first time [the authorities] have tried to subject him to punitive psychiatry. After his anti-war reposts, they were going to mobilize Igor. Yes, with his twisted spine and numbness in his chest! [Yakunichev’s family] went to the courts, got an independent forensics report, confirmed all the diagnoses, and it seemed to go away. And now this. I’m really afraid [the authorities] are not going to give up on this psychiatric hospitalization thing.”

Yakunichev’s relatives fear that the forensic psychological examination at the psychiatric clinic in the Tyumen Region will not be limited to the case and Igor will be kept there “indefinitely”.

The evidence in the last two criminal cases against Igor Yakunichev (on charges of violating Articles 280.1 and 207.3.2 of the Criminal Code) have still not been made available to his family.

“We found out from independent human rights activists—we don’t really know what he’s accused of,” says the relative. “Now they can’t even send you copies of previous cases, because during the search in April [the police] cleaned the Yakunichevs out: [they confiscated] their computer, which his mother had replaced, the telephone, even the TV set! They virtually robbed them so that they could do nothing at all, neither find a lawyer, nor send an electronic complaint.

Source: “Five criminal cases against a janitor: how the security services have been putting pressure on a dissident in northern Russia,” Sibir.Realii (Radio Svoboda), 30 April 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Comrade Koganzon for the heads-up. Thanks also to Nanny Kim for generously continuing to support this website with her monthly donations.

A Shaman’s Tale

The trailer to A Shaman’s Tale (Beata Bashkirova & Mikhail Bashkirov, 2024). Thanks to Pavel Sulyandziga for the heads-up

A Shaman’s Tale

A modern-day shaman sets out across Siberia to Moscow on a protest march and is gradually joined by others. How will the Russian authorities react?

Alexander Gabyshev, a shaman from Yakutia in the Russian Far East, has a revelation: God has chosen him to be a crusader, whose role is to exorcise a demon – Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin – from the Kremlin. He’s willing to sacrifice his life to fulfil this task, which will lead to a new and bright future for Russia. Alexander’s walking pilgrimage captures the attention of many people as well as the police. He discusses his ambitious plan with passers-by in remote parts of Siberia and with lorry drivers travelling on the endless roads. His 8,000 km journey offers a mosaic of current pro- and anti-Putin opinions, and highlights the social instability in both the eastern and the western parts of Russia.

Source: One World

Five years ago, in the spring of 2019, Alexander Gabyshev, who calls himself a warrior shaman, set out on foot from Yakutsk to Moscow. When he arrived in the Russian capital, he wanted to perform a ritual to exorcise Vladimir Putin from the Kremlin. Along the way he was joined by kindred spirits, and he held numerous protest rallies.

The shaman’s trek was cut short: Gabyshev was detained on the border of Buryatia and the Irkutsk Region and charged with “calling for extremism.” In October 2021, a court ordered him to undergo compulsory treatment at a special psychiatric hospital.

The Memorial Human Rights Centre placed Gabyshev on its list of political prisoners, and Amnesty International recognized him as a prisoner of conscience. Despite an international campaign in his defense, the shaman remains in a psychiatric hospital.

The documentary film A Shaman’s Tale details Alexander Gabyshev’s plight. It was made by documentary filmmaker Beata Bashkirova (née Bubenets) and her husband, playwright Mikhail Bashkirov, who live in France. Bashkirova joined Alexander Gabyshev on his trek, while Mikhail Bashkirov wrote a play about the shaman. Performances of the play at Moscow’s Theatre.doc were disrupted by Putinists. This was not Bashkirova’s first clash with ultra-patriots: in 2017, screenings of her documentary film Flight of the Bullet, about the soldiers of the Ukrainian Aidar Battalion, fighting in Donbas, were disrupted in the same way.

This conversation with Beata Bashkirova for the Radio Svoboda programme “Cultural Diary” was recorded after the film’s premiere at the One World International Film Festival in Prague.

Beata, how did you meet the shaman Gabyshev?

I first heard about the shaman in March 2019, when he had just set off on his journey. At that time he was not yet known throughout Russia, but he was beginning to gain popularity in Yakutia and in the Amur Region. He initially gained popularity thanks to truckers: they shot videos [of him] and posted them on their own network, then on YouTube. When I went to Yakutia in the spring to look for an idea for a film, my friends sent me videos of the shaman, recommending him as my future protagonist. But I decided to film him only in June. That was when Vlad Ketkovich, an independent documentary film producer, contacted me. He had made many political films and not only offered to be my producer, but also contributed his own money to my project. We dreamed of making a road movie about the shaman, of filming for two years on the roads of Russia. It was a beautiful idea, which unfortunately didn’t come to pass, because it ended up being film about the political crackdown. In recent years, nearly all films from Russia are about that.

Did you become friends with the shaman?

Yes, we developed a very good relationship. When we were filming in Yakutsk, we were probably among the people closest to him.

He didn’t mind you filming?

He welcomed us filming: he wanted more people and different people to talk about him, to spread his ideas. He was accompanied by a lot of bloggers, and journalists were heavily filming him. Although in the beginning he didn’t let us in so easily. The distrust was not on his part, but on the part of his entourage. They were wary of us, but later everything was fine.

Gabyshev and his squad marching toward Moscow

The shaman is certainly a charming man. But you can’t say that about some of the people in his entourage, judging by your film. Colourful personalities, I guess, always attract strange people, to put it mildly.

Yes, he had a very motley entourage, and he realised it himself. He gave everyone who joined him fabulous nicknames. He called his first two companions Raven and Angel. One was a good, happy man of the new world (the shaman divided the world into the new world and the old world), while other was a man of the old world, a dark character; he had been in prison before, he was this maverick. Raven had many conflicts with other members of the squad. The shaman told me often that yes, there are very different people walking with me, but this is Russia, you have to accept them as they are. Yes, they are different, everyone has their own peculiarities, not all of them are the nicest people in the world, but at the same time they are not the most terrible evil, which they all oppose.

In the film, Gabyshev tries to explain to a Japanese journalist how he became a shaman. Why did he decide to go to Moscow and exorcise the demon Putin?

The poster for the film “A Shaman’s Tale”

He studied at university and served in the army: he had an ordinary life. Then he got married, but his wife was quite ill and died, and that was a huge blow to him. For some time he went to live in the woods: he lived there for several years. Naturally, he knew who Putin was, but he was not interested in politics. As he says, at some point he heard the voice of God telling him that Putin was a demon and you should go and exorcise him from the Kremlin. It was a very clear thought, a realisation that this was his mission. It didn’t come to him in 2019, when he set out, but much earlier. He started preparing years before his trek, but he prepared in secret; he didn’t tell anyone that he had this mission. He practised martial arts — not to fight, but for the spiritual benefits.

And for quite a long time he travelled unhindered, and the authorities didn’t immediately realise what was happening?

Yes, in fact, not many people took it seriously at first: everyone thought it was a joke. But then people started joining him. A few months later, when we were walking with him, there were thirty people with him, and new people were joining every day. His squad grew quite quickly. Two theories as to why he was stopped. The first is that after a few months there would have been hundreds of people walking with him, and that would have been a political threat. But the second theory is that the authorities were afraid of his mystical power. The closer he got to Moscow, the worse things went for Putin, the more protests kicked off. The protests in Belarus began around the same time. Putin was allegedly having health problems — again this is a matter of rumor. So, perhaps, the shaman has now been exiled to the farthest point from Moscow, not even to Yakutsk, but even farther away. That is, as he got closer to Moscow, the Russian authorities lost their grip on things.

Yes, they say there is a lot of superstition in the Kremlin. And in your film, the lawyer Pryanishnikov also explains that the authorities were afraid of the shaman’s mystical power.

That the authorities are superstitious is, of course, a hypothesis — Putin doesn’t perform rituals for us, and there are a lot of myths around this. It is known that one of his closest associates, Shoigu, is a Tuvan and he practices shamanism. So it is quite possible. My Yakutian acquaintances often said that an acquaintance of their acquaintance performed rituals for Putin himself. But, of course, this is all very secret and impossible to prove. I would not claim that Putin performs shamanistic rituals.

Did you have the feeling that Gabyshev actually has supernatural powers?

The first time was in 2020. When the year 2020 came, the shaman kept saying: guys, new times have come, everything will be different now, this year the worldview of all people on the planet will change. And in 2020 there was a pandemic, and mankind did indeed transit into another reality. His words proved prophetic.

People who met Rasputin spoke of his incredible magnetism. They say the same thing about many prophets and magicians. Did you feel something similar when you conversed with Gabyshev?

He is very kind and very open, and there were people in his entourage who believed in his mystical power. I am a rather skeptical person in this sense, but still I noticed a good energy emanating from him.

Did people in his entourage regard him as a prophet, as a saint?

Yes, of course, there were people in his entourage who believed primarily in his mystical power. The Moscow crowd, the opposition-minded liberal intelligentsia, basically sympathised with him, but regarded him ironically. If we’re not talking about Moscow, but about the rest of Russia, I had impression that people believed in his mystical power.

When you presented the film in Prague, you compared Gabyshev with Navalny. This is a quite unusual comparison: in Moscow, few people would agree that these people are cut from the same cloth. Why do you think it is possible to put their names in the same sentence?

At the time, it had been forty days since Navalny’s death. Navalny in his last years seemed like a loner who was fighting the system. Our protagonist is also a loner who fights the system. In this way, I think, they are similar.

Were you present at the moment when his journey to Moscow was finally thwarted?

That was 19 September, and I was not with him on that day. Eyewitnesses say it happened at night, and very quickly. For the first few days nobody knew where he was; there were various rumours. Then it transpired that he was in Yakutsk. We met almost immediately, and he was in pretty good spirits despite what had happened.

Why did they decide to permanently isolate him?

He was going to set out again in the spring. Members of his squad had come to see him. I don’t know whether that’s why they decided to shut him down permanently.

Maybe it was the New York Times article, the attention from the West?

Maybe, but that was in September. The first time he was detained, in the spring of 2020, he was taken away from his home, but then he was released. They finally decided to close him down in early 2021.

The Shaman in the Theatre.doc production of A Shaman’s Tale

In the film, you show excerpts from a performance about the shaman at Theatre.doc. Did your husband direct this production based on his own play?

Yes, my husband wrote the play, and he and I staged it together. It was an experimental work. We decided to make a puppet show, a fairy tale, because the shaman conceived his own story as a fairy tale: he gave fairy tale names to all the folks who accompanied him, and he gave Putin a fairy tale name. That was the reason for our fairy-tale production, which did not last long, because on opening day pro-Kremlin provocateurs came and tried to disrupt it. Every time [the play was performed], they put obstacles in the way: they would come in a big group, stage a performance in front of the theatre, call the police, and start shouting from the auditorium during the performance. The owner of the premises where Theatre.doc was located became afraid that he would face consequences nd broke his lease with the theatre. It became apparent that we wouldn’t be able to perform the play.

Beata, when did you leave Russia?

We left in late March 2022.

And it was only in France that you decided to edit the film?

The film had been in post-production while we were still in Russia. The shaman predicted that he had to reach Putin in 2021, because otherwise there would be a catastrophe not only for Russia but for the whole world. Principal filming wrapped in early 2020, but we realised we had to wait. We were editing the film and discussing it with the producers. The producers suggested releasing the film in 2020, when it became clear that the shaman would not be allowed to go [to Moscow], but we understood that the story was not finished: the drama had already been defined by the shaman himself, and we would have to wait until 2022. The events that followed affected how I saw the story; I started to look at it differently, if we’re talking about the mystical aspects. The shaman had been right: he was talking about war. He was saying that there would be a physical war, not a spiritual war, if he wasn’t allowed to reach Moscow. It’s amazing that somehow he knew all the dates.

Did he have a premonition there would be a war in 2022?

He spoke about the fact that mankind, Russia had two ways to evolve. The first way was the good way, the happy way. If he were allowed to reach the Kremlin, Putin would simply resign peacefully, the regime in Russia would change, and then people would move to a new level. If they didn’t let him [reach the Kremlin], a dark path would ensue, the path of warriors, and that meant war. He didn’t say that there would be a war between Russia and Ukraine. He said that there would be a war and only by military means would it be possible to overthrow Putin.

He’s been transferred from one hospital to another several times. What is happening to him now?

He is in a psycho-neurological clinic in the Maritime Territory (Primorsky Krai). Since this system has several levels, the lawyer is trying to ensure he is transferred to Yakutsk, where he can be released through the court. A legal fight is now underway that is aimed at achieving his release step by step.

At first they held him in a high-security facility and tried to “treat” him with haloperidol?

At the very beginning, in Yakutsk, he was given harsh drugs that did have a negative effect on him. Things in the Maritime Territory are now easier: they give him medication, but it’s not so heavy.

You wrote that he knew about the film’s premiere in Prague and conveyed his greetings to the audience. Are you able to correspond with him?

Yes, we communicate through intermediaries; the lawyer Pryanishnikov has the most access to him. His friends talk to him on the telephone from time to time: he is able to call once a week.

What’s his condition? Haloperidol and other serious drugs can be very harmful to a person’s health.

Fortunately, they are not injecting him with these drugs now. He always tries to be in a cheerful mood. You can write him a letter or send him a card. He is very much encouraged by the thought that people remember him. He is, of course, happy that the film has come out because it is a continuation of the message he preached. His emotional state is also very much affected by whether his mission can be completed.

For several years he had many supporters who were will to march with him to Moscow. Did this circle disperse or has the core group remained intact?

We can say that the core has been preserved. For example, Viktor Yegorov (aka Father Frost), who makes videos (you can watch them on YouTube), is constantly in touch with him. Other Yakutian friends of his also continue to support him. There were those who walked with him, and those he met on the road, but there was also the rest of Russia, which did not walk with him, but followed him via YouTube. People still even ask me about him, and so I feel like there are a lot of people who remember him and support him.

“Father Frost from the Shaman’s Squad Appeals to Vladimir Putin,” 25 September 2019 (in Russian; no subtitles)

Did you ever suspect that he might be mentally unwell?

No, never. He’s a fairly well-educated man, he has a broad outlook, and he is quite self-deprecating. I’m not a psychiatrist, but I haven’t detected any mental abnormalities in him. I much more often encounter people on the streets who are crazier looking than he is.

It is quite difficult to make films on Russian topics nowadays: Russian directors are viewed with suspicion in Europe because they are seen as representatives of an aggressor state. Was it complicated for you to make this film?

Yes, it was indeed difficult to make the film because of the tendency towards boycotting. I think that this boycott helps Russian propaganda first of all, because the voices of independent, opposition filmmakers are not heard, but the voices of the propagandists, who cannot be influenced by this boycott, are heard. Consequently, propaganda wins out in the information sphere. The boycott of Russian culture works in favour of Russian propaganda, it seems to me.

Will Russian viewers be able to see your film?

We’re in the festivals stage of screening now. The film will later be shown on Current Time, but it’s hard to say when yet. Current Time broadcasts to a Russophone audience, and so one will be able to watch the film on the internet in Russia.

Source: Dmitry Volchek, “He wanted to exorcise the demon from the Kremlin: a film about the Siberian shaman,” Radio Svoboda, 15 April 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader. All images in the article above courtesy of Radio Svoboda

Punitive Psychiatry: The Case of Russian Anti-War Protester Mikhail Davydov

A still from CCTV footage of the attack on Oryol regional government building

Compulsory psychiatric treatment for man alleged to have thrown Molotov cocktails on Ukrainian Independence Day

On 1 August 2023, the 2nd Western District Military Court sentenced 49-year-old Mikhail Davydov to compulsory psychiatric treatment. Davydov had been charged with “terrorism” (per Article 205.1 of the Russian Federal Criminal Code) over Molotov cocktails thrown at the regional administration building in Oryol last year.

The criminal case was launched after an unknown cyclist threw two Molotov cocktails at the front doors of the Oryol regional government building on Ukrainian Independence Day (24 August) last years. The cyclist’s actions were captured by a surveillance camera.

The alleged perpetrator, Mikhail Davydov, was apprehended only a week later, on 31 August 2022. A 48-year-old resident of the region, Davydov was allegedly on the federal wanted list for “refusal to testify” (per Article 308 of the Criminal Code). According to investigators, Davydov had been hiding from the FSB since 22 April 2019. Davydov and his lawyer Larisa Melikhova denied this, however. According to them, Davydov had not been hiding from anyone, “since he had been providing for himself since 2019 and had petitioned the Federal Bailiffs Service for alimony payments, which request was denied. He was not in hiding, but had lived the entire time in the Oryol Region’s Bolkhov District, where he was detained by police officers.”

On 8 September 2022, Davydov was charged with “reckless attempted murder” (per Articles 30.3.e and 105.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). The region’s governor, Andrei Klychkov, reported that a regional administration staffer had been wounded during the attack. However, the surveillance footage shows that the cyclist began throwing the Molotov cocktails before the doors opened (that is, they had no intention of killing anyone). In addition, the governor wrote that the employee in question was “doing fine.”

Davydov’s remand in custody at the pretrial detention center was extended several times, each time on the attempted murder charges. Davydov, however, was sent to a psychiatric hospital, apparently in February 2023. At any rate, in March 2023 the court extended his term of detention at a psychiatric hospital.

In June 2023, the case was submitted to the 2nd Western District Military Court, but now on charges of “terrorism.” On 1 August 2023, the court issued a ruling that Davydov be subjected to compulsory medical treatment. According to Kommersant newspaper, “the defendant was declared insane.”

Compulsory psychiatric treatment, unlike imprisonment, is not limited to a fixed term. It ends when a panel of physicians rules that the individual has been “cured,” and the court seconds their ruling. There have been cases in which people were subjected to compulsory psychiatric treatment for many years.

#politicalprisoners #crackdown #punitivepsychiatry #nowar

Source: Solidarity Zone (Facebook), 13 August 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader

Alexander Bakhtin: Justice Is Putin Behind Bars

Alexander Bakhtin (right) says farewell to his mother after his trial. Photo: SOTA via Mediazona

Today, the Mytishchi City Court sentenced 51-year-old animal rights activist Alexander Bakhtin to six years in a penal colony. He was charged with disseminating “fake news” about the Russian army over three VKontakte (VK) posts written in the spring of 2022—about the possible blockade of Kyiv, about the murders of civilians in Bucha, and about Ukrainian volunteers who risked their lives saving homeless animals during the war. In addition to the time in the penal colony, the court ordered Bakhtin to undergo compulsory outpatient treatment supervised by a psychiatrist. The prosecution’s expert witness claimed that Bakhtin “could not have been fully cognizant of the actual nature and social danger of his actions and control them.” Mediazona publishes excerpts from Bakhtin’s rebuttal of the charges, which he asked to be entered into the case file before the verdict was announced. After reading these notes, readers will be able to assess for themselves the clarity and consistency of the convicted man’s thoughts.

In keeping with the principle of the presumption of innocence, it is not for me to prove that the materials I published are true, but for the prosecution to prove that these materials are “knowingly false.” But it was not proved who exactly committed the [war] crimes, which means it was not ascertained whether my actions constituted a crime.

Censorship is prohibited by the Constitution of the Russian Federation, and this Constitution is directly applicable [to my case]. Human rights can be restricted in the Russian Federation only when a nationwide state of emergency and martial law have been declared. But they have not been declared, which means that publishing materials that challenge the stance of the Defense Ministry is not a punishable offense.

I committed the actions that I am charged with in order to inform and familiarize my readers with an alternative point of view to the one that was then disseminated in the Russian media. At the same time, realizing that Ukraine’s official media are also an interested party in this conflict, I tried mainly to find information on the internet not in the official Ukrainian media, but as directly reported by local residents of Ukraine on their pages in social networks and online forums. My ultimate goal was to make what contribution I could to stopping this war, because, for example, the First Chechen War in 1996 was, as I believe, halted largely due to Russian society’s negative attitude towards it.

If we speak of “hatred and enmity” (as encountered in my posts in the form of harsh epithets directed at the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation), then these epithets do not apply to all [members of] the Armed Forces, but only to those [members] who employed various kinds of violence against civilians in Ukraine, or to those individuals who unleashed this war or called for unleashing it—that is, to war criminals. Perhaps, in terms of “generally accepted” definitions, those negative epithets of mine do apply to all their members, but I do not agree with this interpretation because, as follows from the findings of the forensic psychiatric commission, I am also generally partial to subjectivism, including when employing various definitions. So when I was asked by a psychologist to symbolically depict the concept of “justice,” I drew Putin behind bars. And when the psychologist asked me what that had to with justice, I replied that this was what justice looked liked to me right at that moment.

The severity [of a crime] should be defined by its effects. But can the prosecution prove that my publishing these posts produced any specific effects? For example, that they caused someone to lose their faith in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and commit an illegal action? At the time of my arrest, I had a little more than sixty friends on VK, and each criminal episode had about 100 views. There are no victims in the case. I myself stopped publishing these posts around the summer of 2022 precisely because they had no effect. By that time, the overwhelming majority of Russian citizens had already made up their minds about this war. Some of them sincerely supported the Russian authorities, while others supported them for opportunistic reasons (in order not to lose their jobs, etc.). Huge numbers of people were intimidated (including by disproportionate punishments meted out for anti-war stances) and kept quiet. Quite a large number of people emigrated from the Russian Federation altogether, while a huge number of Russians decided that this war did not concern them at all. Thus, not only my posts but also anti-war publications in general were unable to change anything, unfortunately. It was only on the battlefield that matters were decided.

If my posts are so socially dangerous, then why was my VK page not blocked for such a long time?

You can write a letter to Alexander Bakhtin through the Zonatelecom or FSIN-Pismo, or by regular mail to:

Bakhtin Alexander Sergeyevich (born 1971)
219 ul. Gorval, SIZO-2
Volokalamsk, Moscow Region 143600 Russian Federation

Mediazona thanks Nikita Spivak, a lawyer with OVD Info, for the opportunity to read his client’s manuscript.

Source: Nikita Sologub, “Justice is Putin behind bars: what Alexander Bakhtin, sentenced to six years for three posts about the war, said in court,” Mediazona, 11 August 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader. People living outside of Russia will find it difficult or impossible to send letters to Russian prisons via the FSIN-Pismo and Zonatelecom services or regular mail. In many cases, however, you can send letters (which must be written in Russian or translated into Russian) via the free, volunteer-run service RosUznik. Mr. Bakhtin has not yet appeared on their list of supported addressees, however. You can ask me (avvakum@pm.me) for assistance and advice in sending letters to him and other Russian political prisoners.

Compulsory Psychiatric Treatment for Yakut Shaman Alexander Gabyshev

Alexander Gabyshev. Archive photo courtesy of Deutsche Welle

Yakutsk Court Orders Compulsory Medical Treatment for Shaman Gabyshev
Deutsche Welle
July 26, 2021

Alexander Gabyshev has been sent to a specialized medical facility as part of the case against him following accusations of violence against a Russian National Guard officer. The court issued an obiter dictum against Gabyshev’s lawyer, Olga Timofeyeva.

The court in Yakutsk ordered Gabyshev, known as the “Yakut shaman,” to undergo compulsory medical treatment “at a specialized medical facility with intensive care.” Alexei Pryanishnikov, coordinator of Open Russia Human Rights and a defense attorney for Gabyshev, informed MBKh Media of this on Monday, July 26.

According to Pryanishnikov, his defendant will remain in custody until the court order takes effect. Furthermore, the court issued an obiter dictum against Gabyshev’s lawyer Olga Timofeyeva, who stated that she “was ashamed to be taking part in this trial.”

The Gabyshev Case
It was reported in June that Gabyshev—held at the time in the Yakutsk Psycho-Neurological Treatment Clinic—had taken a turn for the worse: he reported feeling weak, dizzy and drowsy.

The shaman’s trial began on April 30. Gabyshev stood accused of using force against a Russian National Guardsman. Gabyshev had been sentenced to six months in the psychiatric clinic, a term that expired on July 27. This is precisely why the Yakutsk court was in such a hurry to review his case, according to Pryanishnikov.

Marching to Moscow
In March 2019, Gabyshev, a resident of Yakutsk, announced that he was walking to the Kremlin to “drive out Putin.” He was detained in September following six months and 3,000 kilometers of travel. The FSB opened a case into publicly calling for extremism, but did not officially accuse the shaman of anything. He was placed in the psycho-neurological clinic and declared mentally incompetent on October 3, but was later released.

In December 2019, Gabyshev again set out for Moscow, but he was detained again, and this time accused of failure to obey the police. In 2020, he underwent compulsory medical treatment in the Yakutsk Republic Psychiatric Clinic, at which point Memorial recognized Gabyshev as a political prisoner.

In January 2021 Gabyshev announced that he was preparing for a new march to Moscow, after which he was again detained and subsequently transferred to the psychiatric clinic.

Translated by the Fabulous AM

Back in the USSR: “Sluggish Schizophrenia”

Back in the USSR: Sluggish Schizophrenia
LiveJournal (Alexei Nasedkin)
July 26, 2021

The man in the photo is Dmitry Nadein, a grassroots political activist from Irkutsk. He’s not just an activist, but was once a volunteer at Alexei Navalny’s local headquarters. Russian law enforcement agencies could not overlook such a dangerous criminal, of course, and, putting aside all their other business, they rushed into battle with him.

Nadein was arrested on February 4 on charges of “condoning terrorism,” in a case launched by FSB investigators. Taiga.Info reported that, on November 21 of last year, Nadein published on his Vkontakte page the news that a military court had sentenced Lyudmila Stech, a Kaliningrad resident, to pay a large fine for “condoning” the “Arkhangelsk terrorist.”

In early April, Nadein was forced to undergo a forensic psychiatric examination: he was diagnosed with “sluggish schizophrenia” and labeled “especially dangerous to society.” And today, thanks to OVD Info, it transpired that [on July 19] the First Eastern District Military Court had ordered Dmitry to undergo compulsory psychiatric treatment.

I’ll take this opportunity to note that there is no such thing as “sluggish schizophrenia” at all. It is a typical Soviet diagnosis, dreamed up by Andrei Snezhnevsky back in 1969 by analogy with Eugen Bleuler’s “latent schizophrenia,” which today is listed as one variety of “schizotypal disorder” (coded as F21 in the ICD-10). Beginning in the 1960s, many ideological opponents of the Soviet Communist Party found themselves under this psychiatric stigma. About a third of all political prisoners were forcibly “treated,” crippling their lives. By the way, this treatment was applied not only to political dissidents per se, but also to “deviants” more generally, as well as to many homeless people and those who avoided military service. Need I mention how many of their civil liberties were violated and how their health was ruined?

Today, step by step, the Soviet model of punitive psychiatry is being restored and modified to new realities. After all, no holds are barred when it comes to “mopping up” the political landscape.

Translated by the Russian Reader

“Slaughter the Gebnya!”

Grigory Severin. Photo courtesy of MBKh Media via Vkontakte

Voronezh activist accused of extremism sent for forensic psychiatric examination
OVD Info
April 4, 2021

Voronezh grassroots activist Grigory Severin, who was charged in March with “making a call for extremist activity” (punishable under Article 280.2 of the Criminal Code) over a post published on the social network VKontakte, was made to undergo a forensic psychiatric examination on April 1. This was reported to OVD Info by his wife.

The woman [sic] notes that the family was afraid that Severin would be forcibly hospitalized, but it did not happen. The results of the psychiatric examination are still unknown.

Severin is charged with writing a post in January 2019 on VKontakte that contained the phrase “Rezh’ gebniu” [“Slaughter the gebnya,” i.e. the KGB or, more generally, the current security services, especially the FSB]. According to investigators, these words constitute “a call for violent actions (murder) against employees of state security agencies.”

On February 25, Grigory Severin’s home was searched. Severin was detained, and the next day the court banned him from doing certain things in lieu of remanding him in custody: the man [sic] cannot use the internet, receive mail, and attend protest rallies and other public events. However, according to Severin’s wife, during the search of their home FSB officers employed combat techniques on the man, beating and strangling him. The activist filed a complaint with the Voronezh regional office of the Investigative Committee, claiming an abuse of power by security forces officers, but a criminal case has not yet been opened.

According to Federal Law No. 114-FZ “On Countering Extremist Activities,” violently attempting to change the constitutional order, violating the state’s territorial integrity, exonerating terrorism, promoting social inequality depending on different characteristics [sic], engaging in discrimination, committing hate crimes, and promoting Nazism, as well as calling for and planning such activities, constitute “extremism.”

Translated by the Russian Reader

Mind What You Post Online, or You’ll Be Sent to the Loony Bin

They’re watching your every word.

Police Investigators Request Compulsory Psychiatry Treatment for Joke on VK Social Network
OVD Info
20 August 2018

Police investigators in Petersburg have asked a court to commit Eduard Nikitin, a disabled man charged with arousing enmity by posting a joke on the VK social network, to compulsory psychiatric treatment, writes Interfax news agency.

Petersburg’s Nevsky District Court is currently hearing the case in closed chambers.

The charges against Nikitin were filed in 2017. He was accused of violating Article 282 of the Russian Federal Criminal Code for posting a caricature and joke on his personal page on the VK (Vkontakte) social network in 2015.

“He was given a psychiatric evaluation. Police investigators have asked the court not to criminally prosecute him, but to have him committed to compulsory treatment,” Maxim Kamakin, the accused man’s attorney, explained to Interfax.

Forensic examiners discovered “extremism” in a joke in which a character doubts the positive changes after an election, as well as in the use of the word vatnik in a caricature.

“This is the first time I have heard of charges like this being filed for a joke, albeit not the most decent joke and a political one to boot,” Kamakin added.

Nikitin said he was summoned by police investigators as part of an enquiry in 2016. Subsequently, the investigators did not contact him for over a year. In late 2017, however, Nikitin received notification of criminal proceedings.

Photo and translation by the Russian Reader

Psychiatry as a Tool of Political Repression in Crimea

A picket for the release of Crimean lawyer Emil Kurbedinov on 31 January 2017 in Simferopol, Ukraine. Photo by Elena Lysenko

Psychiatry as a Tool of Political Repression in Crimea
Madeline Roache
Special to The Russian Reader
April 9, 2017

Lawyers and human rights activists claim the Russian authorities in annexed Crimea have been persecuting human rights activists, most of whom belong to the Muslim Crimean Tatar community. The Crimean Tatars, who make up about 15% of Crimea’s population, have vocally opposed Russia’s occupation of the Ukrainian peninsula since February 2014. As a result, the group has been specially targeted by Russian authorities. Many Crimean Tatars have been forced to leave the region to avoid harassment and arbitrary arrest.

According to a new report, presented on March 23 by Ukrainian advocacy group Crimea SOS, a total of 43 local activists have been abducted since Russian troops occupied Crimea in February 2014—allegedly, by the Russian authorities and their accomplices. Eighteen of those who were abducted are still missing and six have been found dead.

Robert van Voren, a Dutch human rights activist and political scientist, said that, since the annexation, many Crimean Tatar activists who oppose the occupation have been arrested and subjected to abuse and imprisonment in psychiatric institutions.

“Since the annexation of Crimea, Russian authorities have prosecuted and forced into exile virtually all those who oppose the Russian occupation, including key leaders and activists within the Crimean Tatar community”, he said.

Emil Kurbedinov, a prominent Crimean lawyer, told the Guardian that, between December 2016 and March 2017, twelve Crimean activists were forcibly admitted to psychiatric hospitals in Crimea. Four of them remain in hospital, while the rest have either been transferred to prison or discharged.

According to Kurbedinov, Crimean activists are treated in a degrading way and face appalling conditions in psychiatric hospitals.

“Some are placed in isolation and are denied their basic needs, such as access to a toilet. Others are housed with numerous people suffering from severe mental illnesses. The activists are interrogated about their alleged involvement in ‘extremism’ and their views of the government. They are also deprived of the right to speak with their families or meet their lawyers on a one-to-one basis without a guard being present. All of this violates international law,” he said.

All of the Crimean activists were arrested on suspicion of involvement in Hizb ut-Tahrir, which Russia, unlike Ukraine and other countries, has declared a terrorist group. The Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group (KHPG) asserts there is no evidence to suggest the organisation has anything to do with terrorism, nor is there any proof the men were even involved in the group.

Kurbedinov says their arrest was illegal and a breach of protocol, as it was not sanctioned by a judge but ordered by a police investigator.

According to KHPG, a further 19 Crimean activists are currently in custody, accused of involvement in Hizb ut-Tahrir. Memorial, a Russian human rights organization, has declared all the activists in custody political prisoners. KHPG claims that one of the detainees, Emir Kuku, was most likely arrested due to his work for the Crimean Contact Group on Human Rights, which provides legal assistance and support to members of Muslim groups.

Last year, Kurbedinov defended Ilmi Umerov, a Crimean Tatar activist who openly opposed the Russian occupation. Umerov was sent against his will to a psychiatric hospital in August 2016. Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) detained Umerov in May 2016 in the Bakhchysarai District and charged him with separatism. Umerov is also a representative in the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People, an elected body that was suspended by Moscow after it annexed Crimea. Human Rights Watch heavily criticized the case, calling it “a shameful attempt to use psychiatry to silence [Umerov] and tarnish his reputation.” Umerov was released twenty days after his confinement.

Kurbedinov argues that these cases have “acutely raised the issue of the vulnerability of ordinary citizens who have no civil rights whatsoever before the legal and judicial monolith.”

Soviet Psychiatry
The practice of punitive psychiatry in the present day is particularly disturbing given its historical use as a tool of rampant political repression the in the later decades of the Soviet era. Psychiatry was used to systematically confine and punish Soviet dissidents. However, under President Vladimir Putin, cases of the alleged political abuse of psychiatry have resurfaced, leading many to believe that the Soviet-era practice has returned.

The involuntary hospitalization of protestor Mikhail Kosenko in Russia in 2012, is just one of many modern-day cases that has been widely held up as an example of the political abuse of psychiatry. Kosenko was convicted on charges of rioting and assaulting a police officer during the Bolotnaya Square anti-Putin protests in Moscow on May 6, 2012. The case sparked international attention from human rights activists, who asserted the charges were fabricated and that Kosenko’s hospitalization was unnecessary.

The abuse of psychiatry in Russian criminal trials is not uncommon, according to Yuri Savenko, psychiatrist and head of the Independent Psychiatric Association (IPA) in Russia.

“Psychiatry is now frequently part of the procedure in criminal trials where there is no concrete evidence: it is more economical in terms of time and effort just to obtain a psychiatric diagnosis,” he says.

This disturbing phenomenon is of particular concern to the Federation Global Initiative on Psychiatry (FGIP), a human rights organization that protects human rights in mental healthcare. FGIP closely monitors the practice and is currently compiling a report about cases of psychiatric abuse in the post-Soviet states, to be published later this month.

Madeline Roache is a London-based freelance journalist focusing on human rights conditions in the former Soviet Union. Her work has been published in The Guardian, The Times of Central Asia, and Euromaidan Press.

“The Delirium of Religious Reformism”: Punitive Psychiatry Makes a Comeback in Chelyabinsk

Alexei Moroshkin. Photo courtesy of Memorial Human Rights Center

Chelaybinsk Resident Alexei Moroshkin’s Stay in Mental Hospital Extended Six Months
OVD Info
January 11, 2017

On January 10, the Soviet District Court in Chelyabinsk extended Alexei Moroshkin’s forced confinement in a psychiatric hospital for another six months, according to his mother Tatyana Moroshkina. Moroshkin had been sentenced to compulsory psychiatric treatment after having been accused of calling for violation of the Russian Federation’s territorial integrity.

According to Moroshkina, the court paid no attention to any of the arguments made by the defense, neither that her son’s actions and statements did not pose a threat to others, nor that, according to his medical record and the opinion of his physician, he was not dangerous and there was no need to hospitalize him. In making its ruling, the court was guided by the unsubstantiated opinion of court-appointed experts that Alexei Moroshkin could be dangerous, said his mother.

Moroshkin was committed to Regional Clinical Mental Hospital No. 1 in Chelyabinsk in December 2015. Prior to this, a court had considered the charges of calls for separatism made against him in connection with texts, posted on the VKontakte social network, about the need to establish a Ural People’s Republic. In November 2015, a court absolved Moroshkin of criminal liability, declaring him mentally incompetent on the basis of opinions submitted by medical forensic examiners, who during the police investigation had diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia, adding that he suffered from the “delirium of religious reformism.” This diagnosis was occasioned, apparently, by Moroshkin’s online publications and interviews dealing with the virtual Church of the Chelyabinsk Meteorite, which he had invented. At present, acccording to his mother, the medical experts do not mention delirium, but nevertheless consider her son mentally ill and a danger to others.

Before criminal charges were filed against him, Moroshkin had never been under a psychiatrist’s care.

According to his mother, Moroshkin’s physical condition has deteriorated: he suffers from a heart disease. The court also failed to take this circumstance into account.

In October 2016, Moroshkin was suddenly transferred to a wing with worse living conditions than before. Shortly before this, the hospital’s head physician was fined for refusing to provide information about Moroshkin to his defense attorney.

Currently, another case involving Moroshkin is under investigation. He has been accused of painting a bust of Lenin in Chelyabinsk in the colors of the Ukrainian flag and charged under Article 214.2 of the Criminal Code (vandalism).

Translated by the Russian Reader