Boris Kagarlitsky sent to potentially lethal solitary confinement instead of hospital

Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign 10 November 2025

On November 8, the administration of Penal Colony No. 4 (IK-4) in Torzhok (Tver Region) sent Boris Kagarlitsky, sociologist, opponent of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and editor-in-chief of the internet platform Rabkor (“Worker Correspondent”) to solitary confinement for at least three days. According to Rabkor, before sending him to solitary confinement, the colony administration had promised to hospitalise Kagarlitsky at the request of his lawyer Yulia Kuznetsova.

She has reported that she had appealed to the head of IK-4 on October 20, with the request to hospitalize Kagarlitsky. According to Kuznetsova, his health had deteriorated and his blood pressure had begun to rise.

The pretext for Kagarlitsky’s punishment is unknown, and at the time of writing it is not clear if and when his period of solitary confinment will end. However, even if Boris Kagarlitsky is released immediately, the decision to put the 67-year-old in a solitary confinement punishment cell should alarm anyone concerned for his medical condition and his human rights.

Update
The Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign is pleased to announce that Boris Kagarlitsky was released from confinement on November 10, after spending the minimum of three days set by prison regulations for applying this sadistic regime of deprivation of light, heat, sleep and contact with other prisoners.

The news, which was conveyed to the Campaign by his daughter, Kseniya Kagarlitskaya, came as a great relief to Kagatlisky’s supporters.

Confinement, especially solitary confinement, is a weapon used by the Putin regime to break detainees, especially those political prisoners opposed to Russia's war on Ukraine, as Boris Kagarlitsky is.

According to the October 2024 report by UN Special Rapporteur Mariana Katzarova (Situation of human rights in the Russian Federation): “Psychological torture in prisons, including by subjecting detainees to prolonged solitary confinement in a punishment isolation cell (SHIZO), or banishment to a psychiatric ward, can lead to death.”

Give Boris Kagarlitsky proper medical treatment!
The Campaign now demands that Kagarlitsky receive the hospital treatment for high blood pressure that was promised to his lawyer Yulia Kuznetsova three weeks ago, on October 20.

Any delay will confirm the widespread suspicion of his supporters that Putin, in a repeat of his treatment of Alexei Navalniy, is exploiting Kagarlitsky’s physical condition to “persuade” his best known opponent on the Russian left from speaking out against the war and its social consequences.

The absurd pretext for Kagarlitsky’s confinement was that he had soiled his cell. Yet the decision to place him in confinement came not only after prison authorities had promised that he would receive proper hospital treatment.

It also followed the release on October 15 by the platform Vestnik Buri of a remarkable YouTube interview with a digitally created Boris Kagarlitsky, which covers imprisonment, war, the leftist movement in Russia and its prospects, Stalin, and the future.

(The original Russian text version of the interview is available on the Rabkor website while an English translation is available on the web site of Links–International Journal of Socialist Renewal).

A frightened regime?
The fact that the YouTube version of the interview has been seen by over 55,000 viewers to date is surely the material motive for Kagarlitsky’s three days in confinement, ordered over the heads of the prison administration of Penal Colony No. 4 (IK-4) in Torzhok (Tver Region), where he is being held.

It is also a sign of the growing nervousness of the regime of Vladimir Putin, anxious that opposition to its invasion of Ukraine is beginning to spread beyond the usual circles of dissenters to affect broader layers of the population of the Russian Federation.

The Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign will keep the closest possible eye on Kagarlitsky’s ongoing treatment at the hands of the Russian authorities.

While continuing to demand the release of all anti-war political prisoners in the Russian Federation and the occupied territories, we shall also denounce each and every infraction of Kagarlitsky’s right as a detainee.

According to the October 2024 report by UN Special Rapporteur Mariana Katzarova (Situation of human rights in the Russian Federation): “Psychological torture in prisons, including by subjecting detainees to prolonged solitary confinement in a punishment isolation cell (SHIZO), or banishment to a psychiatric ward, can lead to death.”

Opposition leader Alexey Navalnyi, murdered by the Putin regime, described the experience of a SHIZO in his book Patriot: “This is how it works. A concrete kennel measuring 2.5 × 3 meters. Most of the time, it’s unbearable there because it’s cold and damp. There’s water on the floor. I have the beach version — it’s very hot and there’s almost no air. The window is tiny, and because of the thickness of the walls, no air gets in — not even a spider web moves. There’s no ventilation.

“At night, you lie there and feel like a fish on the shore. The iron bunk is attached to the wall, like on a train. Only the lever that lowers it is on the outside. At 5 a.m., they take away your mattress and pillow (this is called “soft inventory”) and raise the bunk. At 9 p.m., the bunk is lowered again and the mattress is returned. An iron table, an iron bench, a sink, a hole in the floor. Two cameras under the ceiling.” If Boris Kagarlitsky is maintained in solitary confinement one day longer than the three-day minimum, our Campaign shall launch the most powerful protests we can manage to end his torture.

Kagarlitsky, along with over 2000 other political prisoners, should never have been deprived of liberty in the first place. His placement in solitary confinement shows how anxious the Putin regime is to silence his powerful voice for democratic rights and social justice. NOTE: The 67-year-old sociologist and opponent of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is serving a five-year sentence for “justifying terrorism.” The justification for the criminal prosecution was his comments about the explosion on the Crimean Bridge (see here for full detail).

In November 2024, Kagarlitsky stated that he refused to participate in possible prisoner exchanges between Russia and the West. He called the expulsion of citizens who are undesirable to the authorities “a form of political repression.”
https://freeboris.info/

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