Another for the Clinic

The case of United Civil Front activist Larisa Arap’s illegal detention in a psychiatric hospital in Murmansk continues to draw worldwide attention to the Putin regime’s disdain for dissent and the law. Now we receive news that another member of an opposition group has received similar treatment. Nikolai Baluev, an associate of Eduard Limonov, leader of the banned National Bolsheviks, has been declared mentally defective and assigned to a psychiatric clinic after a court failed to make a case against him for weapons charges.

The story stems from the Novosibirsk authorities forging a terrorism and weapons case against a group of Limonov’s supporters. Yes, they did have weapons, but this was a family business dedicated to the legal resale of military surplus from the local military bases. Regardless, one of this group has ended up in jail and Baluev, whom they were unable to frame so effectively, has been groundlessly remanded to a hospital despite being of perfectly sound mind.

On a related note, and we are certain we will be hearing many more, a representative of the dreaded Serbsky Institute — where many Soviet dissidents were cruelly imprisoned — gave an interview in which he stated he is sure that Vladimir Bukovsky is psychotic! Bukovsky, who is returning to Russia to join our political fight against Putin, spent 12 years in Soviet clinics and prisons as a prominent dissident.