Violetta Orlova18:06, 06.03.23

The woman was pumped with a drug that is considered harmful worldwide due to side effects.

In Russia, a Ukrainian woman who was deported to the Russian Federation and refused to obtain Russian citizenship was kept in a psychiatric hospital for almost a year and subjected to punitive psychiatry. Human rights defenders were able to release her from the institution and return her to Ukraine in February 2023.

According to the Telegram channel ” We can explain “, human rights defender Oleksiy Pryanishnikov told them about this story. According to him, Kharkiv resident Iryna was taken by bus to Belgorod in May 2022. After that, she ended up in a temporary detention center.

“The medical documents state that Iryna came to Belgorod to visit her relatives, but she herself says that she never had any relatives there,” says Pryanishnikov.

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Due to her refusal to provide information about herself, the woman was sent to the Belgorod mental hospital from the temporary detention center. The human rights defender notes that this is not a reason to incarcerate a person in a mental hospital, but this is not the first case in his practice.

It is noted that Iryna stayed in the Belgorod psychiatric hospital until August 10, 2022. After that, she was transferred to the Engels mental hospital, where doctors pumped her with haloperidol.

“This is a neuroleptic drug that has been used in the treatment of schizophrenia since Soviet times. Throughout the civilized world, it is considered a rather harmful drug that has a lot of side effects,” Pryanishnikov added. 

This case was also complicated by Iryna’s lack of Ukrainian documents. In Russia, the woman repeatedly blackmailed Irina with the opportunity to be discharged from a mental hospital in exchange for receiving a Russian passport, but she did not agree.

“What is the motivation for such an extravagant search for new Russian citizens – we can only guess. I think that such zeal is due to the fact that it is possible to speculate about the choice of Ukrainians in favor of Russia, that is, propaganda motives. And I would not rule out some selfish motives on the part of specific officials.” , the human rights defender explained.

The woman’s son searched for her for five months. In September 2022, he found out that she was in a hospital in Engels, but due to martial law, he could not leave for his mother.

According to Pryanishnikov, he joined the case in January. Iryna’s son was able to get a “white passport” for her in Ukraine – an identity card of a citizen of Ukraine to return to the country. 

On February 21, Pryanishnikov, together with a Saratov lawyer, managed to get Iryna to visit a psychiatric hospital.

“The doctors were not very happy about the unannounced visit, for some reason they consulted with the migration unit of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but before lunch they gave up and released Iryna, withdrawing the demands for Iryna’s accession to Russian citizenship, which were put forward earlier,” says the human rights defender.

Already on the evening of February 23, Iryna was in Kharkiv. There, the woman met her son after 10 months of separation. 

(C)UNIAN 2023