The Polish prime minister Donald Tusk said in Warsaw on Wednesday (17 June) that \u201ceverything indicates\u201d that the murder on 15 June in eastern Poland of Robert \u2060Kuzovkov, a dissident artist from Russia, was a political killing.<\/p>\n
“Everything indicates that this was a political assassination, but we must wait for evidence and more concrete findings,” Tusk told reporters,\u00a0according to the Polish Press Agency<\/a>, warning that it would \u201cconstitute an act of state terrorism\u201d if Russia turned out to be behind the attack.<\/p>\n Kuzovkov, who worked under the pseudonym Semyon Skrepetsky, was 44 years old and a father of five. He was shot three times in broad daylight while walking along a sidewalk in Biala Podlaska, the town in which he lived after moving to Poland in 2021.<\/p>\n Kuzovkov’s often-grotesque caricatures mocked both historical figures and contemporary leaders, including the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin; the Russian president Vladimir Putin; the head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov; the president of Belarus,\u00a0Alexander Lukashenko; Alexei Navalny, Putin\u2019s anti-corruption nemesis who died in prison in 2024; and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. In one, he depicted a baby Putin in the arms of Stalin in an image modelled on Russian Orthodox icons of the Virgin Mary holding Jesus as an infant.<\/p>\n The Kremlin and Kadyrov have been accused of targeting and killing dissidents who have fled the country. And Russia is suspected of staging fires and other attacks, sometimes recruiting assailants for pay via Telegram, the social media and messaging app founded by the Russian-born tech billionaire Pavel Durov.<\/p>\n Kuzovkov frequently posted his caricatures on his page on the app, titled\u00a0\u201cSemyon Skrepetsky\u2019s Picture Gallery<\/a>\u201d. On 14 June he posted multiple images of himself holding the Stalin-Putin icon in protest in front of the Russian embassy in Berlin,\u00a0near the Brandenburg Gate<\/a>. The same day he posted a\u00a0YouTube short<\/a>\u00a0set to a Rammstein song in which he pulls a Russian flag from his posterior and puts it in a trash can.\u00a0His very last post, from 15 June, the day he was killed, shows screenshots of threats against him posted on social media, including one that concluded: \u201cIt\u2019s a six-second operation to find you. So, get ready.\u201d<\/p>\n Two Belarusian men who were detained after the murder have been released, according to Polish authorities. Biala Podlaska is about 30km from the Belarusian border. The Polish Press Agency cited other domestic media reports that Kuzovkov had previously turned down a protection offer from Poland\u2019s Internal Security Agency.<\/p>\n The official Russia news agencies Tass and Ria Novosti published stories about the killing of Kuzovkov.\u00a0Ria Novosti<\/a>, which did not mention his caricatures of Putin and Kadyrov, pointed out that he was listed on Myrotvorets, the site of an organisation that tracks public figures who speak and act against Ukraine. Among the charges on Kuzovkov’s\u00a0listing there<\/a>\u00a0are: \u201cParticipation in acts of humanitarian aggression against Ukraine; spreading narratives of Russian-fascist propaganda; attack on Ukraine\u2019s sovereignty and territorial integrity.\u201d<\/p>\n