A prominent Russian blogger who made a name for himself doing the Kremlin’s bidding was sent to a psychiatric hospital after publicly turning on Vladimir Putin in a shocking manifesto earlier this week.
Ilya Remeslo, a lawyer and former member of a Kremlin-controlled public advisory body, gained fame by targeting critics of the Russian president, most notably opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
But for reasons unknown, Remeslo suddenly had a very public change of heart this week, posting a scathing manifesto in which he called for Putin’s ouster and demanded he be tried for war crimes.
His “Five Reasons why I stopped supporting Vladimir Putin” manifesto left pro-Kremlin figures reeling, with some openly wondering if Remeslo was being held at gunpoint somewhere. But within hours of his damning Putin assessment, Remeslo was sent to a psychiatric hospital, according to the St. Petersburg outlet Fontanka.
Unnamed sources told the outlet an ambulance had been called to Remeslo’s home on Wednesday before he was brought to the hospital.
Remeslo’s unexpected flaying of Putin came at a particularly bad time for the Russian leader, who’s facing criticism from even some longtime supporters over his perceived abandonment of Russian allies Iran and Venezuela. Remeslo also tore into Putin for waging a “dead-end” war in Ukraine that he said was being fought “solely for the sake of Putin’s complexes.”
He called for the Russian leader to be put on trial as a war criminal and thief, blasting the strongman for his repression of media freedom and the internet.
The Telegram post also criticized Putin’s long tenure in power, which began on New Year’s Eve in 1999, after Boris Yeltsin relinquished the presidency.
“Absolute power corrupts absolutely,” Remeslo wrote. “We need a new modern president.”
In a later post he called on Putin to undergo several sessions of psychotherapy.
His tone was a striking departure from the past, when he had regularly shared Kremlin-friendly news articles and sometimes linked directly to the Kremlin website.
Few details of Remeslo’s condition have been reported by Russian media. He was admitted to Skvortsov-Stepanov City Psychiatric Hospital No. 3 in St. Petersburg and is able to receive deliveries of packages, according to Fontanka.
His about-face comes shortly after a new analysis revealed that Navalny, the opposition leader long seen as the only potential replacement for Putin until he was jailed and later killed, was poisoned by a toxin found in certain frogs. Remeslo was widely seen as a driving force behind Navalny’s jailing.
His hospitalization comes as the Kremlin suspends peace talks between Russia, the United States, and Ukraine.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov described it as a “situational pause, for obvious reasons,” referring to the war in Iran.
Russia has become increasingly involved in that conflict. New reporting from the Wall Street Journal finds Moscow has been sharing both drone technology and satellite intelligence with the ruling Iranian regime.
That information reportedly assisted in strikes on American radar systems in the Middle East.
In the meantime, the Trump administration has delivered a brief win to Russian oil interests, temporarily dropping sanctions on its tankers in a bid to relieve energy markets.
