The Polish prime minister Donald Tusk mentioned in Warsaw on Wednesday (17 June) that “every thing signifies” that the homicide on 15 June in japanese Poland of Robert Kuzovkov, a dissident artist from Russia, was a political killing.
“Every thing signifies that this was a political assassination, however we should look ahead to proof and extra concrete findings,” Tusk advised reporters, in keeping with the Polish Press Company, warning that it will “represent an act of state terrorism” if Russia turned out to be behind the assault.
Kuzovkov, who labored underneath the pseudonym Semyon Skrepetsky, was 44 years outdated and a father of 5. He was shot 3 times in broad daylight whereas strolling alongside a sidewalk in Biala Podlaska, the city during which he lived after shifting to Poland in 2021.
Kuzovkov’s often-grotesque caricatures mocked each historic figures and modern leaders, together with the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin; the Russian president Vladimir Putin; the top of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov; the president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko; Alexei Navalny, Putin’s anti-corruption nemesis who died in jail in 2024; and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. In a single, he depicted a child Putin within the arms of Stalin in a picture modelled on Russian Orthodox icons of the Virgin Mary holding Jesus as an toddler.
The Kremlin and Kadyrov have been accused of focusing on and killing dissidents who’ve fled the nation. And Russia is suspected of staging fires and different assaults, typically recruiting assailants for pay by way of Telegram, the social media and messaging app based by the Russian-born tech billionaire Pavel Durov.
Kuzovkov steadily posted his caricatures on his web page on the app, titled “Semyon Skrepetsky’s Image Gallery”. On 14 June he posted a number of photographs of himself holding the Stalin-Putin icon in protest in entrance of the Russian embassy in Berlin, close to the Brandenburg Gate. The identical day he posted a YouTube brief set to a Rammstein music during which he pulls a Russian flag from his posterior and places it in a trash can. His final submit, from 15 June, the day he was killed, reveals screenshots of threats in opposition to him posted on social media, together with one which concluded: “It’s a six-second operation to search out you. So, prepare.”
Two Belarusian males who had been detained after the homicide have been launched, in keeping with Polish authorities. Biala Podlaska is about 30km from the Belarusian border. The Polish Press Company cited different home media stories that Kuzovkov had beforehand turned down a safety provide from Poland’s Inner Safety Company.
The official Russia information companies Tass and Ria Novosti revealed tales concerning the killing of Kuzovkov. Ria Novosti, which didn’t point out his caricatures of Putin and Kadyrov, identified that he was listed on Myrotvorets, the location of an organisation that tracks public figures who communicate and act in opposition to Ukraine. Among the many fees on Kuzovkov’s itemizing there are: “Participation in acts of humanitarian aggression in opposition to Ukraine; spreading narratives of Russian-fascist propaganda; assault on Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Crimea Vox, a information company based mostly in Kyiv that focuses on resisting Russia’s unlawful occupation of the Black Sea peninsula, highlighted his defence of Indigenous folks.
“It turned out that [Kuzovkov] was an ethnic Bashkir”—a area of the Russian Federation that has chafed underneath Kremlin rule—“and gained recognition by his satirical works, during which he mocked the authoritarian regimes of Russia and Belarus,” a Crimea Vox submit on Fb states. “It’s also identified that the artist had repeatedly criticised the Ukrainian authorities and was listed on the Myrotvorets database. Regardless of this, he remained one of the vital outstanding critics of the Kremlin regime, brazenly supporting the rights of Indigenous peoples underneath Moscow’s rule.”
