In Russia, dozens of dissenters are held as psychiatric patients


FILE PHOTO: Vessels sail along the Yenisei River, with flowers seen in the foreground, in the city of Krasnoyarsk, Russia August 18, 2019. REUTERS/Ilya Naymushin/File Photo

LONDON (Reuters) - Dozens of Russians are being subjected to compulsory psychiatric treatment because of their political views, according to lawyers and human rights groups - a trend they say has gathered pace since the start of the war in Ukraine.

The practice carries echoes of a method of control used widely in the Soviet Union and known as "punitive psychiatry", even if the current scale falls far short of that seen from the late 1960s until the early 1980s.

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