It Seems that Putin Has Destabilized His Government by His Willful Refusal to Win the Conflict in Ukraine
Last days of the Putin regime? With forcible incarceration of dissidents in psychiatric hospitals Putin has taken over the relay race of Sovietism from Brezhnev
Gilbert Doctorow
March 21, 2026
Make no mistake about it, there is a power struggle going on today in the Kremlin. Putin and his entourage are fighting to hold onto power. They are under threat from an assortment of opponents who have their own separate criticisms of Putin’s management of affairs. The disaffected now includes a good part of the foreign policy establishment which was deeply shaken by the U.S. attack on Iran, which they see as a foretaste of what awaits Russia now that Putin & Co. have allowed Russia’s deterrence to lapse by their failing to respond to the West’s brazen provocations that cross red lines clearly delineated by Putin in the past.
The Putin regime is starting to use every dirty trick in the books to suppress open dissent, including forced hospitalization in psychiatric hospitals, which was one of the ugliest chapters in the Brezhnev era of the 1960 to 1980. The article below published on Reuters sets out in detail what the Russian news ticker dzen.ru described in two sentences yesterday morning. Now that I have looked into Russian social media, I see that the case of Ilya Remeslo is getting a lot of attention there, so this is not an insignificant incident.
The problem is that the defensive measures taken by Putin go well beyond the incarceration of Mr. Remeslo. It is now openly stated in Russian official media that not only is the mobile internet being shut down for extended periods of time in St Petersburg, Moscow and other cities but the speed of internet service to home subscribers is being slowed. If the first, shutdown of mobile, is nothing new, and note that I reported on this phenomenon more than a year ago on my periodic visits to Petersburg, explaining it then in terms of preventive measures against incoming Ukrainian drones, then the second state intervention to slow fixed line internet has no such explanation and must be viewed in terms of preventive measures against domestic dissent and possibly against coordinated protests. Does this sound like the behavior of a government that polls say has 80% support of the population? Hardly.
One side element in the shock of the US attack on Iran comes precisely from the de facto military and political leader Ali Larijani this past week. That highlighted to the Russian expert community how the presence of Liberals at the top of the Iranian political establishment seeking deals with Washington at the expense of Iranian sovereignty enabled penetration by Mossad spies and of Iranian traitors to the regime. This is precisely the problem from which Russia itself suffers even after the departure of so many high visibility Liberals at the start of the Special Military Operation. And that problem may be traced straight back to the President, who coddles them. If anyone had any doubts about this, Putin’s bizarre happy birthday wishes to the Naina Yeltsina, the widow of the former President, a few days ago was proof positive that Putin honors one of the country’s biggest traitors, as set out every few weeks in great detail by the Russian film maker and great patriot Nikita Mikhalkov on his television program Besogon. The Yeltsin Center in Yekaterinburg for which Naina is the chief sponsor has acted in collusion with the U.S. consulate in the city to disseminate what can only be called sedition.
The power struggle in the Kremlin is not our affair, but its outcome will be our affair since it will directly impact the conduct of the war in Ukraine and Russia’s responses to the many threats coming from the West which so far have been very subdued.
Putin Henchman Tossed in Psych Hospital After Shocking Plea to Russians
A very public call to overthrow the Russian leader came from an unlikely source—and within a matter of hours, that source was locked up.
Updated Mar. 19 2026 3:30PM EDT Published Mar. 19 2026 12:50PM EDT
By Donovan Lynch
Pelagiya Tikhonova/via REUTERS
A prominent Russian blogger who made a name for himself doing the Kremlin’s bidding was sent to a psychiatric hospital after publicly turning on Vladimir Putin in a shocking manifesto earlier this week. ,
Ilya Remeslo, a lawyer and former member of a Kremlin-controlled public advisory body, gained fame by targeting critics of the Russian president, most notably opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
But for reasons unknown, Remeslo suddenly had a very public change of heart this week, posting a scathing manifesto in which he called for Putin’s ouster and demanded he be tried for war crimes.
His “Five Reasons why I stopped supporting Vladimir Putin” manifesto left pro-Kremlin figures reeling, with some openly wondering if Remeslo was being held at gunpoint somewhere. But within hours of his damning Putin assessment, Remeslo was sent to a psychiatric hospital, according to the St. Petersburg outlet Fontanka.
Unnamed sources told the outlet an ambulance had been called to Remeslo’s home on Wednesday before he was brought to the hospital.
Screenshot, translated from Russian, showing Remeslo’s anti-Putin post on Telegram. Ilya Remeslo/Telegram. Ilya Remeslo/Telegram.
Remeslo’s unexpected flaying of Putin came at a particularly bad time for the Russian leader, who’s facing criticism from even some longtime supporters over his perceived abandonment of Russian allies Iran and Venezuela. Remeslo also tore into Putin for waging a “dead-end” war in Ukraine that he said was being fought “solely for the sake of Putin’s complexes.”
He called for the Russian leader to be put on trial as a war criminal and thief, blasting the strongman for his repression of media freedom and the internet.
Remeslo lays out his opposition to the Russian leader. Ilya Remeslo/Telegram. Ilya Remeslo/Telegram
The Telegram post also criticized Putin’s long tenure in power, which began on New Year’s Eve in 1999, after Boris Yeltsin relinquished the presidency.
“Absolute power corrupts absolutely,” Remeslo wrote. “We need a new modern president.”
The anti-Putin message received support from hundreds. Ilya Remeslo/Telegram. Ilya Remeslo/Telegram
In a later post he called on Putin to undergo several sessions of psychotherapy.
His tone was a striking departure from the past, when he had regularly shared Kremlin-friendly news articles and sometimes linked directly to the Kremlin website.
Few details of Remeslo’s condition have been reported by Russian media. He was admitted to Skvortsov-Stepanov City Psychiatric Hospital No. 3 in St. Petersburg and is able to receive deliveries of packages, according to Fontanka.
His about-face comes shortly after a new analysis revealed that Navalny, the opposition leader long seen as the only potential replacement for Putin until he was jailed and later killed, was poisoned by a toxin found in certain frogs. Remeslo was widely seen as a driving force behind Navalny’s jailing.
His hospitalization comes as the Kremlin suspends peace talks between Russia, the United States, and Ukraine.