Since the start of the war in Ukraine, more than 50 activists have been put in "lunatic asylums" in Russia

Russian courts have sentenced 53 activists and dissidents to compulsory psychiatric treatment since the start of the war in Ukraine.

Russian courts sentenced 53 activists and dissidents to compulsory psychiatric treatment during the war in Ukraine. This was reported by Moskow Times with reference to 7x7 publication.

Historian Alexei Makarov, a member of the board of the "Memorial" human rights center, told the publication that in modern Russia, compulsory psychiatric treatment is not as widespread as in the USSR, and society does not have the opportunity to use medical documents to determine the validity of the diagnosis.

"We have few mechanisms to monitor what is happening in mental hospitals. The Serbsky Institute of Forensic Psychiatry has a monopoly, and nothing prevents the state and psychiatrists from expanding such practices and using them more crudely, " Makarov explained.

He added that forensic psychiatry could return to Soviet standards if there was a "direct political order" to do so.

Lyubov Vinogradova, a clinical psychologist and executive director of the Russian Independent Psychiatric Association, agrees. According to him, since the beginning of the 2000s , psychiatry in Russia "is becoming more and more inhuman."

" In the 1990s , in the process of democratic reforms, a law was adopted on the guarantees of citizens' rights regarding psychiatric care and its provision. At that time, concepts were formed that psychiatry is only a voluntary thing, and all mandatory measures depend on the court's decision; "In the early years when the law came into force, everyone was used to it, but by the end of the 2000s , it was really a different time," he explained.

At the end of May , "Agency. Novosti" Telegram channel wrote that over the past year and a half, RF courts have sent at least 33 defendants in political cases to compulsory psychiatric treatment.

In total, since 2013, "dissidents" have been sent to compulsory treatment 55 times. Until 2020, this indicator was no more than three people per year, and in 2021 it increased to seven people, and in 2022 it decreased to three people. However, last year this figure increased sharply to 25, and in the four and a half months of this year, the number of such decisions was not less than eight.

For example, in May, the Leninsky court of Nizhny Novgorod sent local citizen Alexei Volsky to compulsory treatment in the case of "fake news" about the army. Last November, the same decision was made against Victoria Petrova from St. Petersburg. In October 2023, a court ordered compulsory psychiatric treatment for Alexey Onoshkin, a resident of Nizhny Novgorod - he was accused of "fake news" and "calls to terrorism" for posts and comments on the VK social network. Last year, Oleg Nepein, a deputy from the village of Khoperskoe in Saratov, was also subjected to punitive psychiatry for his information in a regional interview about the killing of residents of Mariupol and Bucha by the Russian army.

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