St Petersburg, Russia. A pro-Kremlin figure who publicly denounced Russian President Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine in a viral social media post this week has been placed in a psychiatric facility, the hospital said on Thursday.
Viral manifesto and shift in position
Ilya Remeslo, who built a career denouncing Putin’s critics, posted a manifesto late on Tuesday to his 90,000 Telegram followers titled “Five reasons why I stopped supporting Vladimir Putin.”
In the post, he said Putin had prosecuted a “failing war” in Ukraine that had killed millions and damaged Russia’s economy to the detriment of citizens’ well-being. “Vladimir Putin is not a legitimate president. Vladimir Putin must resign and be brought to trial as a war criminal and a thief,” Remeslo wrote.
His shift surprised Russia’s pro-war blogger community and the exiled anti-Kremlin opposition.
Hospitalisation reported in St Petersburg
On Thursday, St Petersburg’s Fontanka newspaper reported that Remeslo had been hospitalised in the city’s Psychiatric Hospital No. 3. Reuters said it was unable to reach Remeslo or determine how he came to be hospitalised.
A woman who answered the hospital’s telephone number confirmed to Reuters that a man with the name, patronymic and surname matching Remeslo’s had been admitted to the facility. The hospital worker, who did not give her name, said she did not have details about when Remeslo had been admitted or on what grounds.
Background and past political role
Remeslo is a 42-year-old lawyer and former member of a Kremlin-controlled advisory body. He had previously heavily criticised the late opposition figure Alexei Navalny, Putin’s most prominent critic, who died in an Arctic penal colony in February 2024.
What do you think Remeslo’s hospitalisation could mean for other prominent voices on Russian social media?
