In Russia, dozens of dissenters are held as psychiatric patients [View all]

Source: Reuters

In Russia, dozens of dissenters are held as psychiatric patients

Mark Trevelyan and Lucy Papachristou
Thu, February 20, 2025 at 2:03 AM EST 8 min read

LONDON (Reuters) - Dozens of Russians are being subjected to compulsory psychiatric treatment because of their political views, according to lawyers and human rights groups - a trend they say has gathered pace since the start of the war in Ukraine.

The practice carries echoes of a method of control used widely in the Soviet Union and known as "punitive psychiatry", even if the current scale falls far short of that seen from the late 1960s until the early 1980s.

For this story, Reuters analysed data from an international expert and two Russian human rights groups, interviewed three lawyers and reviewed case materials of two female activists sent by court order to undergo psychiatric assessments at a Siberian hospital.

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Yekaterina Fatyanova, 37, was interned on April 28 last year at the KKPND No.1 psychiatric hospital in her home city of Krasnoyarsk after being accused of discrediting the Russian armed forces by publishing an article in a small opposition newspaper she ran in her spare time. She was not the author of the piece, which argued the war in Ukraine was driven by imperialist motives.

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Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/russia-dozens-dissenters-held-psychiatric-070316987.html