A Kaliningrad activist has been declared insane and sent to a psychiatric hospital

Oleg Savvin, an activist from Kaliningrad, has been declared insane and sent to a psychiatric hospital, according to lawyer Alexander Chausov.

A court psychiatric assessment carried out during the investigation concluded that Savvin has a mental disorder. The Leningrad District Court in Kaliningrad ruled him insane and temporarily transferred him from the pre-trial detention centre to the Kaliningrad Regional Psychiatric Hospital (under Article 435 of the Criminal Procedure Code). The lawyer plans to appeal this decision.

In March 2025, a case was opened against Savvin for spreading “military fakes” based on hostility (para. “d” part 2 article 207.3 of the Criminal Code), over a three-year-old post on VKontakte accusing the Russian army of crimes against planet Earth in connection with the situation around Ukrainian power plants. At the end of March, the man was sent to a pre-trial detention centre.

• Savvin has a previous conviction for hooliganism for events in 2014, when he and two other activists hung a German flag on the FSB building in Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea; he was released in 2015.