U.S. citizen Joseph Tater has left Russia after being confined to inpatient treatment at a psychiatric clinic in Moscow, the news agency TASS reported on June 6. In August 2024, Tater was jailed for disorderly conduct after being ejected from the lobby of a Radisson hotel. He was also investigated for the felony offense of assaulting a police officer. In March 2025, a judge released Tater with the condition that he not leave the country.
A commission of psychiatrists later found that Tater exhibited “heightened tension, impulsive behavior, delusional ideation and relational disturbances, persecutory beliefs, ideas of reference, and absence of insight into his mental state.” On these grounds, a court ordered his hospitalization at a psychiatric facility.
Defense attorneys called Tater’s psychiatric hospitalization “illegal and unfounded,” arguing that the state was merely isolating their client after exhausting other pretrial detention options. A source with knowledge of Tater’s medical treatment told TASS that he was discharged after doctors determined that there were “no grounds to keep him at the clinic.” Tater’s lawyer in Moscow, Polina Vlasyuk, told reporters that she “knew nothing about this.”
In May, Reuters reported that Joseph Tater was among the nine Americans jailed in Russia who could be included in a potential prisoner exchange between Moscow and Washington.