Lucy Papachristou
March 19 (Reuters) – A pro-Kremlin figure whose unexpected social media post this week went viral condemning Russian President Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine has been admitted to a psychiatric hospital, a hospital said on Thursday.
Ilya Remeslo, who made a career out of denouncing Putin’s critics until he became one himself, posted a manifesto to his 90,000 followers on Telegram on Tuesday night titled: “Five reasons why I stopped supporting Vladimir Putin.”
He said Putin had waged a “failed war” in Ukraine that had killed millions and devastated the Russian economy and harmed the well-being of its citizens.
“Vladimir Putin is not the legitimate president. Vladimir Putin must resign and face trial as a war criminal and thief,” Remeslo wrote in the post.
His U-turn this week surprised Russia’s pro-war blogging community and exiled anti-Kremlin opponents.
On Thursday, St. Petersburg’s Fontanka newspaper reported that Remeslo had been admitted to the city’s No. 3 Psychiatric Hospital. Reuters was unable to reach Remeslo himself or determine how he ended up in the hospital.
A woman who answered the hospital’s phone confirmed to Reuters that a man matching Remeslo’s first, patronymic and surname had been admitted to the hospital.
The unnamed hospital worker said she did not know details about when Remeslo was admitted or why.
Remeslo, a 42-year-old lawyer and former member of a Kremlin-controlled advisory body, has in the past been harshly critical of the late opposition figure Alexei Navalny, Putin’s most prominent critic who died in an Arctic exile in February 2024.
(Reporting by Lucy Papachristou; Editing by Guy Faulconbridge, Gareth Jones, Alexandra Hudson)
