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In Putin’s Russia, Soviet-style abuse of psychiatry to silence opposition seems to be a new and growing trend

Mr Basirov, 20, a university student, was among a group of pro-democracy activists planning a protest against President Putin’s increasingly authoritarian rule ahead of last December’s elections. But on the night before the planned demonstration, he was snatched by secret service officers, taken to a state psychiatric hospital and forced to undergo a month of “treatment”, during which he was fed mind-numbing drugs…

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Mr Basirov’s case follows that of Larissa Arap, 49, a journalist from Murmansk who was detained in a psychiatric hospital for 46 days after she exposed the abuse of children at the very same unit.

Another case involved Roman Nikolaichik, 27, from Tver, near Moscow, who is also a supporter of Other Russia.

The use of punitive psychiatry was pioneered during the era of Nikita Khrushchev.

More on punitive psychiatry in the USSR here and more on the Larisa Arap case here.