Published on: April 9, 2014

Problems obtaining pain medicines appear to have played an important role in several of the suicides in Moscow. Vyacheslav Apanasenko, the retired admiral who shot himself on 10 February, left a suicide note saying: “I ask not to blame anyone except for the Health Ministry and the government.” His family had been unable to get the final signature on a prescription for a strong pain killer on the day of the suicide……

Shockingly, Moscow’s deputy mayor, Leonid Pechatnikov, nonchalantly dismissed these human tragedies as the result of an “aggravation of psychiatric disorders” caused by the spring.

Read the powerful article in the International Business Times by Mr Diederik Lohman of Human Rights Watch.