Russia revives Soviet-era tactics to quash dissent, says UN expert

By Olivia Le Poidevin

GENEVA (Reuters) -Russia is reviving Soviet-era tactics such as forced psychiatric treatment to silence dissenters and anti-war voices in an increasingly repressive environment, a U.N. expert said on Monday.

Rights groups say President Vladimir Putin's government has lurched further into authoritarianism since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than three years ago, but Moscow denies that and accuses the West of a smear campaign.

A report this month by Mariana Katzarova, the U.N.'s special rapporteur on rights in Russia, found that state-sponsored repression is escalating and becoming systematic via national security laws and other measures.

"Punitive psychiatry has returned as a tool against anti-war voices," Katzarova told reporters in Geneva.

The Russian diplomatic mission in Geneva pointed Reuters to a September 8 statement by its foreign minister saying that Moscow does not recognise her mandate and calling her work illegitimate. Moscow has previously called criticism of its rights record unfounded.

Since the invasion of Ukraine, it has passed stronger laws to punish dissenters and perceived traitors.

Torture, criminal prosecution and coercive psychiatry were among measures being used, Katzarova said, with the latter documented in an average 23 cases annually since 2022, compared to five per year from 2015-2021.

"It's the old Soviet tool of getting dissidents, in this case, anti-war activists, also journalists," she said.

SCARRING EXPERIENCE

In March, Reuters reviewed case materials of two female activists who described the scarring ordeal of being sent by court order to undergo psychiatric assessments at a Siberian hospital.

Some of the coercive psychiatry measures include invasive and unnecessary tests, and being admitted open-endedly as a psychiatric patient.

Katzarova gave the example of journalist Maria Ponomarenko, whom she says was ordered to undergo compulsory psychiatric treatment for maintaining her anti-war stance.

Ponomarenko was imprisoned for spreading "fake news" about the war in Ukraine in 2023 and handed an additional sentence of 10 years in March.

Russia says it is essential to maintain domestic stability and accuses Western intelligence agencies of trying to destabilise the country.

Katzarova said laws on foreign agents and spreading fake news were being harnessed "massively" to suppress dissent and critics, by portraying journalists, political opponents and anti-war activists as enemies of the state.

Just over 20,000 people have been arrested for expressing an anti-war position since the full-scale Ukraine invasion began, according to Russian rights group OVD-Info.

(Reporting by Olivia Le Poidevin, Editing by Miranda Murray and Andrew Cawthorne)