From torture to indefinite punitive psychiatry in Russia’s savage persecution of Melitopol Telegram administrator

Russia’s Southern District Military Court has ordered ‘mandatory psychiatric treatment’ in the case of 28-year-old Mark Kaliush, one of several journalists and administrators of two pro-Ukrainian Telegram channels seized by the Russians in August 2023.  Although the same court is likely to pass horrific sentences against Kaliush’s colleagues from the Telegram channels ‘Melitopol is Ukraine’ and ‘RIA-Melitopol’, there are no grounds for suspecting ‘judge’ Ilya Nikolaeivhc Bezgub of concern for the young Ukrainian’s mental health.  Russia’s FSB almost certainly tortured or terrified Kaliush into providing an insane ‘confession’ on video almost two years ago, and the young man has been held prisoner ever since. Russia is now applying punitive psychiatry, with a key difference from the huge prison sentences normally imposed being that there is no end date, with such ‘psychiatric treatment’ conceivably continuing indefinitely.

Mark Kaliush was one of at least six young Ukrainians from Melitopol involved with the above-mentioned Telegram channels who were abducted on or around 20 August 2023.  It was, however, only in late October 2023 that Russian propaganda media posted a video on which Kaliush and several others, including fellow Telegram administrator 19-year-old Yana Suvorova, had clearly been tortured or terrorised into ‘confessing’ to a bizarre and implausible ‘terrorist plot’.   

The propaganda film on Rossiya-1 did not even conceal the fact of Kaliush’ earlier diagnosis yet showed him reciting the following ‘confession’: “The first task was to photograph all enemy, Putler [from the merger of the names of Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Adolf Hitler] Rosgvardia sites, and post the photos. I, of course, carried out the task.  The second task – they asked me to pick up a bomb and take it to a place where these orcs of the Russian Putler Rosgvardia were gathered, and to then detonate it.”

While the aggressor state’s Rosgvardia fighters were an entirely legitimate target for Ukraine’s Armed Forces or partisans, there is nothing to suggest that the Ukrainians abducted in August 2023 were involved in anything but telling the truth about Melitopol under Russian occupation on the two Telegram channels. It is that which Russia would not tolerate and that led to its ferocious crackdown. 

This was immediately recognized by Reporters without Borders [RSF] which issued a statement condemning “the arrest by Russian occupying forces of six journalists and Telegram news channel administrators in Melitopol” and demanding their release.

It was Mediazona which, fortunately, drew attention to the ruling by Ilya Nikolaevich Bezgub on 7 July 2025, as Kaliush’ name is concealed on the court details of the case.  He was illegally charged, under Russian legislation, with ‘planning an act of terrorism’ (Articles 205 § 2a and 30 § 1 of Russia’s criminal code); ‘threatening to kill’ (Article 119 § 1) and illegal possession and transfer of explosives, under Article 222.1 § 3).  Mediazona reports that he was transferred to a so-called ‘psychiatric institution’ after almost a year in detention from 20 August 2023, although no evidence had been provided to back the charges against him.  Since the charges against him were never dropped, there are no grounds for believing this to be anything but the punitive psychiatry used as a weapon against prominent dissidents during Soviet times and now being reinstated by the current Russian regime.

The Memorial Support for Political Prisoners Project recently reported that over 20 new prosecutions of Ukrainian prisoners of war or civilians had been passed to the Southern District Military Court, with these including three or probably four of the young journalists or Telegram administrators abducted in August 2023: 25-year-old Maksym Rupchov; Denys Hlushchenko; Oleksandr Malyshev and, most likely (the name is concealed) Yana Suvorova, who was 19 when first taken prisoner. 

Vladyslav Hershon, who was also abducted at the same time, is on trial alone, though, like Yana Suvorova, he appears to have been an administrator of the Melitopol is Ukraine Telegram channel.  Although his ‘case’ was passed to the court in May this year, there have been virtually no hearings, with Hershon twice, allegedly, not brought to court.  The charges against him, under the same, illegally applied Russian criminal code, are of ‘spying’ (Article 276); ‘involvement in a terrorist organization’ (Article 205.4 § 2); ‘planning an act of terrorism’ (Article 205 § 2a & c).  His trial is before a single ‘judge’, Gurgen Serzhikovich Dovlatbekyan. 

As reported, the Russians managed to hack into and hijack the Telegram channel RIA-Melitopol back on 20 August 2023, and it was then that journalist Heorhiy Levchenko and, almost certainly, Yana Suvorova; Mark Kaliush; Oleksandr Malyshev and Maksym Rupchov were abducted.  Kostiantyn Zinovkin was also shown on the Russian propaganda video two months later, on 29 October 2023, although he had been abducted in May 2023, and is now on ‘trial’ on quite different charges.  The FSB seldom worries about such discrepancies with a number of Ukrainian political prisoners having been tortured into ‘confessing’ on video to supposed crimes that later disappeared from the indictment.

The real RIA-Melitopol, now found here, reported on 30 October that Russia had come up with “an entire blockbuster in the style of Russian propaganda” over two months after seizing their Telegram channel and abducting its administrators. A Vesti.ru propagandist supposedly accompanied FSB ‘seizure squads’ in their early morning ‘operation’ against the above-mentioned Telegram channel administrators.  All of this, including the armed FSB officers in balaclavas and full military gear, was clearly staged, since Zinvovkin had been abducted back in May and the Telegram administrators on 20 August 2023, not, as the Vesti.ru ‘correspondent’ claimed, in the early hours of 27 October 2023.

It was claimed that “RIA Melitopol was used “as well as its propaganda functions, for the gathering of information about the places of deployment and routes of Russian army units, and to recruit people to carry out acts of terrorism”.

The program was very clearly aimed at threatening horrific consequences to all those patriotic Ukrainians in Melitopol that they too could face such armed raids, whose men shoot to kill if they encounter any resistance.  Although the charges included ‘terrorism’, no attempt was made to conceal the fact that the young Ukrainians had been arrested as administrators of Telegram channels and ‘information providers.”  The ‘terrorism’ charges, moreover, were based solely on the videoed ‘confessions’ of young people who had been held incommunicado, without access to independent lawyers and almost certainly tortured and threatened for over two months.