’No longer a human being’

How a woman was sentenced to compulsory psychiatric treatment for spreading ‘fake news’ about the Russian army

In 2022, Viktoria Petrova was arrested and charged with spreading “fake news” about the Russian army for social media posts condemning the war in Ukraine. After Viktoria didn’t abandon her views in jail, a psychiatric committee declared her “legally incompetent”; nevertheless, the court still found her guilty of “knowingly publishing false information.” Now, she’s been sentenced to “potentially indefinite” compulsory psychiatric treatment. Journalists from the independent news outlet Bumaga reported on Viktoria’s case, detailing her situation and the events that led to it. In English, Meduza is publishing an abridged version of their story.

‘Strange behavior’

Viktoria Petrova was arrested in May 2022 after posting videos from Ukraine on VKontakte, a popular Russian social media site, and charged with spreading “fakes” about the Russian army. This wasn’t the first time Viktoria had spoken out about the war. At the beginning of 2022, she started a political YouTube channel where she posted about protests in Kazakhstan and condemned Russia’s war against Ukraine, and as early as 2021, she criticized Putin for considering a full-scale invasion.

Viktoria refused to plead guilty to the charges, and the court ordered a “linguistic analysis” of her posts, to be conducted by St. Petersburg State University’s Center for Linguistic Expertise (the same center that was involved in anti-war artist Sasha Skochilenko’s case). Viktoria’s lawyer, Anastasia Pilipenko, insisted that these experts had a conflict of interest: Viktoria had previously criticized university professors who publicly supported the “special military operation,” including staff at the center. Also, during questioning, none of the experts seemed able to recall what materials they’d examined for Viktoria’s case. Pilipenko tried to get the “linguistic analysis” thrown out on these grounds, but was unsuccessful. According to Pilipenko, the judge even instructed the experts on how they should respond to the defense’s questions.

At the beginning of 2023, Viktoria was still in pre-trial detention. Pilipenko said Viktoria’s cellmates accused her of continuing to spread “anti-war propaganda,” leading the jail to file a “report of strange behavior,” after which the court sent Viktoria in for a psychiatric evaluation. Specialists said their conversations with Viktoria were inconclusive, so the defense team gathered additional medical information and interviewed Viktoria’s mother about her daughter’s upbringing, development, and education. However, this information was also deemed insufficient, and the court ordered an inpatient forensic psychiatric examination at a St. Petersburg hospital.

This time, Viktoria’s evaluators concluded that both at the time of her social media posts and at present, Viktoria was unable to understand or control her actions. Pilipenko said these experts twisted Viktoria’s words. According to the lawyer, the court had no reason to suspect Viktoria of any mental disorders, and the defense provided the court with medical documents confirming Viktoria’s psychological stability. After Viktoria was found “legally incompetent,” the court appointed her a legal guardian. While the defense made sure Viktoria’s uncle was assigned this role, he wasn’t always able to attend hearings, and the city employee who stepped in while he was gone took the prosecution’s side after hearing Viktoria’s position on the war in Ukraine. When this representative said it was better for Viktoria to be in custody, the court sent her to a psychiatric hospital.

There, according to Pilipenko, Viktoria was forced to undress for a “physical examination” while male nurses watched. She wasn’t allowed to change her sanitary pad beforehand. “Her period had started, and blood was already running down her legs. Younger and older men, as well as women around forty and sixty, laughed at Vika and mocked her,” Pilipenko said.

The male nurses also wrenched Viktoria’s arms when she refused to take a shower in front of them. According to Pilipenko, they restrained Viktoria, “shook her like a rag doll,” and threatened to beat her “as a welcome” to the medical facility. “They made her understand that here, in the hospital, she’s no longer a human being,” Pilipenko added. Viktoria was also tied to a bed and injected with medications that left her practically unable to speak for about two days.

Twisted logic

On December 21, the evidentiary phase of Viktoria Petrova’s trial concluded and the two sides began their closing arguments. In the end, the prosecution didn’t even refer to the “linguistic analysis” from St. Petersburg State University, which was the only “evidence” they had that Viktoria’s statements were false and contained “political hatred.”

Instead, Pilipenko said, the prosecutor found another way to argue that Viktoria had shown “political hatred” in her posts. Pilipenko explained the prosecution’s logic:

If you don’t love the president, it means you don’t love your homeland. And if you don’t love it, this means you hate it. If you read foreign media, it definitely means you hate your homeland. If you’re a citizen of the Russian Federation, consume official Russian media.

As additional proof of Viktoria’s guilt, an investigator for the prosecution presented a private message someone had sent her calling her a “Russophobe and terrorist.” The investigator said this showed her direct intent to publicly post false information.

After the arguments, Viktoria gave her final statement. In it, she called Russia’s war against Ukraine a crime against humanity and a humanitarian disaster, demanding it come to an end. “The images of suffering from this monstrous war have been etched into my memory,” Viktoria said. She also called for an end to criminalizing “fake news against the Russian army” and for the release of all political prisoners.

Five days later, the court sentenced Viktoria to six months of compulsory treatment in a psychiatric hospital. According to Pilipenko, the length of the initial sentence has little bearing on reality. A special medical commission will convene every six months to decide whether to extend Viktoria’s treatment. In theory, she could be in treatment indefinitely. Viktoria and her lawyer plan to appeal the court's decision.

Pilipenko said that declaring Viktoria mentally incompetent undermines the entire logic of the supposed crime:

If Vika didn’t understand her actions or couldn’t control them when she published anti-war posts, then how can she be accused of knowingly publishing false information? In simple terms, if a person’s critical abilities are diminished or impaired, how can they be expected to discern that the Defense Ministry’s messages are reliable and BBC News Russian’s messages aren’t?

Story by Nikita Pakharev and Ekaterina Barkalova for Bumaga