On November 6, 2025, the Central District Court of Khabarovsk sentenced student Andrey Moroztev to five years in a maximum-security penal colony in a case involving the purchase of banned substances and large-scale drug smuggling under Articles 228 and 229.1 of Russia’s Criminal Code. After the verdict was read out, he attempted to take his own life in the courtroom, but convoy officers stopped him.
Moroztev has been diagnosed with idiopathic hypersomnia, a rare neurological disorder that, he said, forces him to sleep 14 to 15 hours a day and sometimes caused him to faint during classes. He told journalists that Russian doctors had long suspected other conditions, while foreign specialists and later the Vivia clinic identified the orphan disease.
To ease the symptoms, Moroztev ordered armodafinil from India in 2023. Media outlets noted that in some countries the drug is legally used for hypersomnia, and that a foreign doctor prescribed it because there are no medications for this condition in Russia. At the same time, the medicine contains a psychotropic substance whose circulation is restricted in Russia.
“I believed in truth, law, and justice until the very end,” Moroztev wrote in a farewell post on VK before the suicide attempt.
Moroztev maintained that he did not know mailing such medicine was prohibited, and said antidepressants and inotropic drugs prescribed to him in Khabarovsk did not improve his condition. According to media reports, he had a prescription for the drug, but it was not preserved. He also believed the situation was worsened because a pharmacist at Well In Cure India failed to declare the parcel properly.
After the criminal case was opened, Moroztev brought together Russian patients with the same diagnosis and tried with them to secure registration of the drug in Russia and its removal from the list of banned substances, but without success. The publication notes that similar cases arise regularly in Russia: some are dropped, as happened in the cases of Yelena Bogolyubova and Darya Belyayeva, but many end in fines or real prison terms.