On March 17, Ilya Remeslo — a blogger, lawyer and former member of Russia’s Public Chamber — published a manifesto on his Telegram channel titled “Five reasons why I stopped supporting Vladimir Putin.” In the post he said the war in Ukraine was “failing,” denounced online censorship and restrictions on free speech, and criticized Putin’s long hold on power, accusing him of treating the presidency like a lifelong throne. He described presidential press conferences as a “circus” and called Putin illegitimate, saying: “Putin must resign and be brought to justice as a war criminal and a thief.”
The following day Remeslo uploaded videos apparently intended to show he remained in Russia and declared he was prepared to go to prison now so that, after Putin’s fall, he might be viewed as a hero. The posts provoked a strong reaction online and appear to have been followed by his admission to St. Petersburg’s Psychiatric Hospital No. 3. How exactly he was placed in the facility is unclear; contacts with him were lost and many questions remain unanswered.
Remeslo had been one of the more prominent “Z‑bloggers,” patriotic influencers who supported the Kremlin’s war policy and attacked dissent. He gained visibility campaigning against the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny, including testifying in court cases across Russia. Navalny died in prison in early 2024 while serving a lengthy sentence on charges that included extremism.
In an interview conducted before his hospitalization, Remeslo said his change of heart was voluntary, the result of a personal evolution and a new “mission.” He told the interviewer his views shifted after the 2023 uprising led by mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin and its aftermath. Aware of the risks, he said he would not flee abroad and expressed hope for political change within a year.
Responses from his former allies and pro‑Kremlin commentators were rapid and mostly skeptical. Chechen special forces commander Apti Alaudinov, who had worked with Remeslo, said he was “deeply shocked” and suggested Remeslo might have been coerced into making the statements. TV host Vladimir Solovyov speculated the blogger might have suffered a “nervous breakdown” caused by the war. Pro‑government websites variously dismissed Remeslo’s criticism as an attempt to destabilize Russia or as a calculated ploy serving other interests.
Analysts reacted with caution or condemnation. Ivan Filippov, a researcher of Russian propaganda, described Remeslo as an “accomplice in the murder of Alexei Navalny” and warned that calling Putin a “war criminal” and “thief” was unprecedented for a former pro‑Kremlin influencer and could expose him to arrest. Political scientist Abbas Gallyamov interpreted Remeslo’s turn as part of a broader shift in sections of Russian media and society driven by war fatigue, economic pressure and declining trust in government.
Some observers also suggested the authorities may have played a role in Remeslo’s fate. Dmitry Oreshkin argued that the blogger had likely been forced into psychiatric care, saying the state had an interest in preventing him from becoming a public martyr and instead seeking to humiliate or break him. Oreshkin cited the grim reputation of St. Petersburg’s Psychiatric Clinic No. 3, which has been associated since the Soviet era with forensic psychiatric measures. He added that the wide spectrum of reactions — from hysteria to despair and hostility — reflected a politically inert society in which social‑media eruptions are treated as major events.
Remeslo’s sudden break with the Kremlin line and his subsequent detention in a psychiatric facility have intensified debate inside Russia and among observers abroad about dissent, coercion and the limits of tolerated criticism. Many questions about the circumstances of his hospitalization and his current status remain unresolved.
This article was originally written in German.
![{“title”:”November 1938 Pogroms Revealed Nazi Brutality”,”content”:”\”I can still clearly remember the morning of November 10,\” W. Michael Blumenthal recalled. \”My father was arrested early in the morning. Amid the commotion and despite the fact that my mother had forbidden me to do so, I went outside without being noticed. I saw the broken shop windows on Kurfürstendamm boulevard and smoke coming out of the synagogue on Fasanenstrasse.\” He was just 12 years old.\n\nThe Fasanenstrasse synagogue in Berlin was set alight on the night of November 9, 1938, and the image of burning synagogues and shattered storefronts quickly became the emblem of a coordinated, nationwide assault on Jews. That night and the days that followed saw roughly 1,300 synagogues and some 7,500 Jewish businesses destroyed; cemeteries, schools and homes were vandalized. Police largely stood aside as Jews were dragged into the streets, beaten and publicly humiliated. Fire brigades often refused to fight blazes in Jewish buildings, focusing instead on protecting \”Aryan\” properties.\n\nThe violence intensified on November 10, when about 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps including Dachau, Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald. Blumenthal\u2019s father was among those taken. Blumenthal remembered his mother\u2019s desperate questions as he was marched away: \”What’s going on? What are you doing with him? What has he done? Where is he being taken to?\” Even at 12, he felt the adults’ fear.\n\nBlumenthal’s family escaped to Shanghai in 1939, one of the few destinations then admitting Jewish refugees without visas. He later described his experience in his memoir From Exile to Washington: A Memoir of Leadership in the Twentieth Century.\n\nThe attack did not come from nowhere. Anti-Jewish persecution had been official policy since the Nazis took power in 1933. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 legally defined Jews and imposed sweeping professional and social bans, and the program of \”Aryanization\” had already dispossessed many Jewish businesses and property. Still, historians mark November 1938 as a decisive break: the era of German Jewry as it had existed effectively ended, and German society was changed irreversibly.\n\nThe immediate pretext for the pogroms was the assassination on November 7, 1938, in Paris of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, a Jewish teenager. Within hours of German radio reporting the killing, anti-Jewish riots erupted in some cities; two days later, after orders from the Nazi leadership, the violence was organized and intensified. At a gathering in Munich for the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch, propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels drafted directives that called for the destruction of Jewish businesses and synagogues. Police were told not to intervene, firefighters were instructed to protect only non-Jewish buildings, and looting was officially prohibited even as theft nevertheless occurred.\n\nOfficials’ instructions were carried out across Berlin, Cologne, Hamburg, Frankfurt and hundreds of smaller towns and villages. Many Germans either joined the attacks or watched without intervening. \”The November 1938 pogrom was carried out in plain sight,\” said Raphael Gross, president of the Deutsches Historisches Museum. \”It could be seen by everyone \u2014 the press of the world, foreign diplomats and all citizens.\”\n\nDiplomats in Germany reported scenes of \”cultural barbarism\” and widespread looting; some accounts were especially brutal. Reports collected by Hermann Simon, former director of the Centrum Judaicum, included the Polish consul general in Leipzig describing a woman stripped and nearly raped, the Latvian ambassador likening Kurfurstendamm to a battlefield, and the Finnish envoy noting pervasive shame and condemnation among the German population. Governments received these dispatches, but most took only limited action. A small number of concrete responses did follow: for example, the Kindertransport to England began after November 1938, bringing many children to safety. But by and large international reactions were inadequate.\n\nFew at the time predicted the scope of what would come. In a stark misjudgment, the Italian embassy wrote on November 16, 1938, that it was inconceivable Germany would one day send hundreds of thousands to execution or confine them in massive camps.\n\nHistorians today regard the events of November 9, 1938, as a turning point that revealed the regime’s readiness for widespread, state-condoned violence against Jews. Because the old term \”Kristallnacht\” is now seen as trivializing, the events are more accurately referred to as the Reichspogromnacht or the November Pogroms.\n\nThis piece is a rewritten account of reporting originally published in German and previously adapted in English.”]}](https://fresh-world-news.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/914-17213993_6-440x248.jpg)
![{“title”:”November 1938 Pogroms Revealed Nazi Brutality”,”content”:”\”I can still clearly remember the morning of November 10,\” W. Michael Blumenthal recalled. \”My father was arrested early in the morning. Amid the commotion and despite the fact that my mother had forbidden me to do so, I went outside without being noticed. I saw the broken shop windows on Kurfürstendamm boulevard and smoke coming out of the synagogue on Fasanenstrasse.\” He was just 12 years old.\n\nThe Fasanenstrasse synagogue in Berlin was set alight on the night of November 9, 1938, and the image of burning synagogues and shattered storefronts quickly became the emblem of a coordinated, nationwide assault on Jews. That night and the days that followed saw roughly 1,300 synagogues and some 7,500 Jewish businesses destroyed; cemeteries, schools and homes were vandalized. Police largely stood aside as Jews were dragged into the streets, beaten and publicly humiliated. Fire brigades often refused to fight blazes in Jewish buildings, focusing instead on protecting \”Aryan\” properties.\n\nThe violence intensified on November 10, when about 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps including Dachau, Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald. Blumenthal\u2019s father was among those taken. Blumenthal remembered his mother\u2019s desperate questions as he was marched away: \”What’s going on? What are you doing with him? What has he done? Where is he being taken to?\” Even at 12, he felt the adults’ fear.\n\nBlumenthal’s family escaped to Shanghai in 1939, one of the few destinations then admitting Jewish refugees without visas. He later described his experience in his memoir From Exile to Washington: A Memoir of Leadership in the Twentieth Century.\n\nThe attack did not come from nowhere. Anti-Jewish persecution had been official policy since the Nazis took power in 1933. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 legally defined Jews and imposed sweeping professional and social bans, and the program of \”Aryanization\” had already dispossessed many Jewish businesses and property. Still, historians mark November 1938 as a decisive break: the era of German Jewry as it had existed effectively ended, and German society was changed irreversibly.\n\nThe immediate pretext for the pogroms was the assassination on November 7, 1938, in Paris of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, a Jewish teenager. Within hours of German radio reporting the killing, anti-Jewish riots erupted in some cities; two days later, after orders from the Nazi leadership, the violence was organized and intensified. At a gathering in Munich for the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch, propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels drafted directives that called for the destruction of Jewish businesses and synagogues. Police were told not to intervene, firefighters were instructed to protect only non-Jewish buildings, and looting was officially prohibited even as theft nevertheless occurred.\n\nOfficials’ instructions were carried out across Berlin, Cologne, Hamburg, Frankfurt and hundreds of smaller towns and villages. Many Germans either joined the attacks or watched without intervening. \”The November 1938 pogrom was carried out in plain sight,\” said Raphael Gross, president of the Deutsches Historisches Museum. \”It could be seen by everyone \u2014 the press of the world, foreign diplomats and all citizens.\”\n\nDiplomats in Germany reported scenes of \”cultural barbarism\” and widespread looting; some accounts were especially brutal. Reports collected by Hermann Simon, former director of the Centrum Judaicum, included the Polish consul general in Leipzig describing a woman stripped and nearly raped, the Latvian ambassador likening Kurfurstendamm to a battlefield, and the Finnish envoy noting pervasive shame and condemnation among the German population. Governments received these dispatches, but most took only limited action. A small number of concrete responses did follow: for example, the Kindertransport to England began after November 1938, bringing many children to safety. But by and large international reactions were inadequate.\n\nFew at the time predicted the scope of what would come. In a stark misjudgment, the Italian embassy wrote on November 16, 1938, that it was inconceivable Germany would one day send hundreds of thousands to execution or confine them in massive camps.\n\nHistorians today regard the events of November 9, 1938, as a turning point that revealed the regime’s readiness for widespread, state-condoned violence against Jews. Because the old term \”Kristallnacht\” is now seen as trivializing, the events are more accurately referred to as the Reichspogromnacht or the November Pogroms.\n\nThis piece is a rewritten account of reporting originally published in German and previously adapted in English.”]}](https://fresh-world-news.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/914-17213993_6-320x180.jpg)