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The historian and former head of the Karelian branch of Memorial, Yury Dmitriyev, has been returned to Mordovia’s Penal Colony No. 18 after being hospitalised with suspected stroke symptoms. No diagnosis was made due to the lack of necessary equipment, RusNews reports, citing a representative from Dmitriyev’s support group.

“He is not feeling well. <…> Yury Alekseyevich received a course of injections. What he was injected with is unknown. He has been prescribed bed rest until 28 October, but for some reason the colony staff are not aware of this and are not allowing him to rest,” the representative said.

Dmitriyev, who is 70, was urgently transferred from Penal Colony No. 18 to a prison hospital on 25 September. The historian was experiencing severe weakness and problems with coordination; he could not stand unaided. At the time, the Human Rights Centre wrote that Dmitriyev should be transferred to the district hospital where there is the necessary equipment for examination and treatment.

  • The criminal prosecution of historian Yury Dmitriyev began in 2016, when a criminal case was opened against him over photos of his adopted daughter in the nude—Dmitriyev himself says he took them only to document the child’s physical development for child welfare authorities. In 2018, the court acquitted Dmitriyev, but two months later, the Supreme Court of Karelia overturned this decision and sent the case for review. The acquittal was overturned following a complaint from the child’s biological grandmother.
  • In 2020, the court sentenced Dmitriyev to three and a half years in prison. The sentence was later increased to 13 years, and after convictions were reviewed again—to 15 years in a high-security colony.
  • Dmitriyev denied guilt. The Memorial Human Rights Centre recognises him as a political prisoner.
  • Yury Dmitriyev is the former head of the Karelian Memorial Society and one of the first people to discover mass graves of victims of Stalinist repression at Sandarmokh. In August 2018, excavations were carried out there to test the hypothesis that Sandarmokh holds the remains of Soviet prisoners of war who had been held in Finnish camps.