Pro-war blogger reportedly receiving psychiatric care after ‘unprecedented’ break with Kremlin

Russian pro-war blogger and ex-Kremlin loyalist Ilya Remeslo has been admitted to a hospital in St. Petersburg, where he is currently undergoing psychiatric treatment, Russian independent news outlet Bumaga reported on Thursday, citing pro-Kremlin Telegram channels.

The development comes two days after Remeslo, previously a staunch supporter of Putin’s regime, shared a post with his followers on Telegram entitled “Five reasons why I no longer support Vladimir Putin”, sparking massive speculation about the reasons behind his sudden and unprecedented break with the Kremlin.

In an interview with exiled Russian journalist Alexander Plyushchev on Wednesday, Remeslo explained that he had first become disillusioned with Putin after Yevgeny Prigozhin, co-founder of the Russian mercenary Wagner Group, led a failed mutiny against Moscow in 2023.

Since then, he said that it had become clear that both the system propping up Putin’s regime and Russia’s endless war in Ukraine were “doomed to failure”, adding that Putin’s centralised leadership style lacked a “mechanism for self-correction”.

“I actually reckon that Putin’s regime won’t last until the end of the year; his service life is up”, Remeslo continued. “That system is self-destructing, and it will self-destruct.”

Asked whether others in the pro-war movement shared his point of view, Remeslo claimed he had spoken to several well-known figures who had privately expressed similar discontent with Putin’s regime. One unnamed pro-war blogger allegedly compared the current situation to that in Ukraine in 2014, before the Maidan protests that swept pro-Russian president Victor Yanukovych from power.

Remeslo’s abrupt change in position has so far received no public backing in loyalist circles, with prominent propagandist Apti Alaudinov initially suggesting that his account had been hacked, or that Remeslo was being held hostage by pro-Ukrainian forces.

The news of Remeslo’s admission to psychiatric care on Wednesday evening aligns with later speculation from both pro-Kremlin and exiled opposition figures that Remeslo was having a “mental breakdown”.

In a Telegram post on Thursday, Plyuschev noted the reports that Remeslo had been taken to a psychiatric hospital, and said that since their interview Remeslo was no longer replying to messages or WhatsApp calls.

The Kremlin routinely punishes Russians harshly for any criticism of Putin and the war in Ukraine. On Wednesday, a 56-year-old political prisoner died in pretrial detention in Russia, where he was being held for calling the invasion of Ukraine “a shameful war by a shameful president”.