Shaman Gabyshev has been transferred from hospital to a psychiatric and neurological clinic.

On 3 September, shaman Aleksandr Gabyshev was transferred from the specialised psychiatric hospital in Ussuriysk to the Yakutsk Psychoneurological Dispensary. This was reported by RusNews.

The conditions in the new facility are more lenient than in Ussuriysk. Gabyshev’s relatives can now contact him by phone and visit him in person.

Gabyshev was sent for compulsory treatment in a psychiatric facility with close supervision in July 2021. In February 2022, this regime was eased to treatment in a specialised hospital. In December 2024, the Ussuriysk District Court in Primorsky Krai ruled to transfer the shaman from the specialised facility to a general ward. However, in February 2025, the prosecutor’s office appealed this decision.

Gabyshev, who calls himself a “warrior shaman,” spent several months in 2019 walking towards Moscow with the aim, as he put it, “to drive out Putin.” He was detained for the first time in September 2019 at a night camp near the federal highway on the border with Irkutsk Region, in Siberia. That same year, Gabyshev was charged with publicly calling for extremist activity (Part 1, Article 280 of the Criminal Code). A psychiatric evaluation initiated by the FSB in Yakutia found Gabyshev showed signs of insanity. His defence maintains the evaluation was flawed.

In February 2021, yet another criminal case was opened against the shaman—this time under charges of using violence against a representative of authority (Part 2, Article 318 of the Criminal Code). The grounds were a wound sustained by a Rosgvardiya (National Guard) officer when police and a medic came to take Gabyshev to the psychiatric clinic. Investigators claim the shaman wounded the officer with a makeshift bladed weapon. In March of the same year, it became known that an examination did not find any signs of harm dangerous to the health of the officer recognised as the victim in the case. Nevertheless, as early as July of that year, Gabyshev was sent for compulsory treatment and has remained in psychiatric facilities ever since.