Pro-Kremlin blogger who turned on Putin put in psychiatric hospital

A pro-Kremlin Russian blogger who unexpectedly blasted President Vladimir Putin has been placed in a psychiatric hospital in Saint Petersburg, staff at the facility told AFP on Friday. Blogger and lawyer Ilya Remeslo was for years a public henchman for the Kremlin, targeting and smearing its critics. But in a rare sign of disloyalty, the 42-year-old on Tuesday turned his campaign on the Russian president himself, calling Putin a “war criminal” and accusing him of “tyranny” and “corruption”.

The outburst caused a stir across the Russian political spectrum, four years into a military campaign in Ukraine, which has seen public dissent inside the country completely crushed. When contacted by AFP via telephone on Friday, a staff member at Saint Petersburg’s psychiatric hospital number 3 said that a man with Remeslo’s full name and the same year of birth had been admitted to the facility a day earlier. They were not permitted to disclose details of his condition.

The Baza Telegram channel, which has ties to Russia’s law enforcement agencies, and pro-war bloggers also reported that Remeslo had been admitted to the facility. During the Soviet Union, the psychiatric hospital housed dissidents who had been forcibly hospitalised, according to rights activists. Former patients accused the centre of violating their rights. Remeslo, who was largely unknown among the wider public before turning on Putin, spent years lodging reports and testifying in court against Putin’s main domestic critic, Alexei Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison two years ago.