Russian sociologist and anti-war political prisoner Boris Kagarlitsky was released from three days of solitary confinement on November 10, to the relief of his supporters.
“Confinement, especially solitary confinement, is a weapon used by the [Vladimir] Putin regime to break detainees, especially those political prisoners [such as Boris] opposed to Russia’s war on Ukraine,” said the Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign (BKISC), following his release.
According to the October 2024 report on the Situation of human rights in the Russian Federation, by United Nations Special Rapporteur Mariana Katzarova: “Psychological torture in prisons, including by subjecting detainees to prolonged solitary confinement in a punishment isolation cell (SHIZO), or banishment to a psychiatric ward, can lead to death.”
Kagarlitsky’s supporters are now demanding that he receive hospital treatment for high blood pressure — which was previously promised to his lawyer Yulia Kuznetsova.
“Any delay will confirm the widespread suspicion of his supporters that Putin, in a repeat of his treatment of Alexei Navalniy, is exploiting Kagarlitsky’s physical condition to ‘persuade’ his best-known opponent on the Russian left from speaking out against the war and its social consequences,” said the campaign.
Kagarlitsky’s punishment followed the release on October 15 of a Russian-language YouTube interview with a digitally created Kagarlitsky, where, with AI-assisted voice rendering and auto-captions, Kagarlitsky discusses life in prison, Russia’s war, the state of the left media and prospects for post-war political realignment. The video and an English translation of the interview transcript can be viewed at links.org.au.
The video has been seen by more than 56,000 viewers to date, and Kagarlitsky’s supporters believe it was a “material motive” for his three-day solitary confinement, “ordered over the heads of the prison administration” and “a sign of the growing nervousness of the [Putin] regime”.
Kagarlitsky is currently serving a five-year prison sentence in Torzhok, Russia, on trumped-up charges of “justifying terrorism.” His real “crime” was speaking out against Russia’s war on Ukraine.
As previously reported, Kagarlitsky was initially handed a fine after being found guilty of “justifying terrorism” for a joke he made on a YouTube video. However, the Russian state prosecution appealed his sentence on the grounds it was “excessively lenient”, and the military appeals court agreed, upgrading his sentence to a five-year prison term, which commenced in February last year.
The BKISC said it will continue to monitor Kagarlitsky’s ongoing treatment at the hands of the Russian authorities.
“We shall denounce each and every infraction of Kagarlitsky’s right as a detainee, while continuing to demand the release of all anti-war political prisoners in the Russian Federation and the occupied territories.”
[Visit freeboris.info for more information about the campaign.]