Vitebsk psychiatrist Igor Postnov has died in Penal Colony No. 1 in Navapolatsk. He was 58. Human rights defender Pavel Levinov reported it on social media on 4 October 2026. The cause of death was not given. According to Levinov, the body is not being released to the friends who want to bury him.

Postnov was born on 30 May 1968 in Vitebsk. He graduated from the local medical institute with distinction, worked for many years as a pediatrician, then trained in psychiatry. He had no family of his own. His mother, with whom he lived, died earlier. He did have friends and colleagues. REFORM.news and Vitebsk Spring reported this.

First a hospital, then “khimiya”

He became widely known in 2013. He spoke publicly about problems in Vitebsk hospitals. After he criticized the then head of the regional executive committee, Aliaksandr Kosinets, on Belsat, Postnov was forcibly placed in a psychiatric clinic — the one where he himself worked. He was held there for more than a month. He challenged both the court order and the diagnosis. In 2014 the Independent Psychiatric Association of Russia examined him and concluded that he did not need treatment.

In 2018 a case was opened against him for defaming the Vitebsk prosecutor, Yury Ramanouski. Postnov said the prosecutor was abusing his office. Levinov writes that Ramanouski was later prosecuted himself and convicted. In May 2019 a court gave Postnov three years of restricted freedom in an open-type institution, the so-called “khimiya.” He was out by July of that year. He wrote that he had “agreed to an amnesty” or to a “deal,” without details. He was then hired as a psychiatrist at the Dokshytsy central district hospital.

In 2020 he sharply criticized dictator Aliaksandr Lukashenka for how the authorities handled the pandemic. Postnov himself was seriously ill with the coronavirus.

A colony almost nothing is known about

He was sent to Navapolatsk Colony No. 1 later. Open sources do not say when the trial was, under which article, or for how many years. He had no relatives who could find this out. He lived a closed life. Some sources link this sentence to a conflict with the Dokshytsy district authorities: Postnov was allegedly threatened with revenge for a principled professional stand. That is a version from sources, not an established verdict.

Former political prisoner Ihar Losik, who was in Navapolatsk at the same time, told Nasha Niva and Zerkalo:

“He probably set a record for time in the punishment cell, spending 150 days there in a row in 2023 and refusing to go back to the unit. I don’t know his article, but he is in a ‘low status’ and spent all those 150 days in the same cell, number 12. He constantly wrote complaints about the administration to the prosecutor’s office, complained about torture by cold and about arbitrary punishments.”

The complaints, Losik said, went nowhere. The answer was another punishment. In the end he was forced out of the isolation cell. Losik said that from hunger Postnov looked for food in the trash by the canteen. At checks he warned the administration about responsibility for torture. In reply, the cell orderly doused him with chlorine, his toilet paper was taken, the water was shut off, and he was frozen. Losik did not know the charge. The 150 days are his estimate, with the word “probably.”

Even after death

Levinov wrote that friends want to bury Postnov properly, but the state, according to the information he has, refuses to give them the body. The circumstances of the death were not stated. He is asking for an independent investigation. Euroradio carried the same, citing Viasna: there is no one to establish the cause, because he had no close relatives.