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Russian political artist Pyotr Pavlensky released from custody with $15,000 fine

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by , 06-18-2016 at 01:58 AM (861 Views)
      
   


A Moscow court has ordered political performance artist Pyotr Pavlensky to pay nearly 1m rubles (about $15,400) for setting fire to the door of the Federal Security Service (FSB) headquarters in a performance called Threat last November. Pavlensky was released from custody on Wednesday, 8 June, and given a fine of 500,000 rubles for damaging a “cultural heritage” site and 481,000 for the cost of replacing the door—but the artist told reporters he refused to pay.“Of course I’m not going to [pay it], otherwise it will end up that Threat was carried out on loan, as if I had bought it from the FSB,” he said, according to the RIA Novosti news agency. “Even if I had that kind of money, I wouldn’t pay the fine.”

Pavlensky’s dramatic middle-of-the-night performance at the FSB building on Lubyanka Square—a notorious former prison run by the security agency’s predecessor the KGB—placed him in direct conflict with Russia’s current political system. He first gained widespread media attention in 2012, when he sewed his mouth shut to protest the imprisonment of Pussy Riot. In 2013, he nailed his scrotum to Red Square in protest against Russia’s “police state.” In 2014, he set fire to tires on a bridge in St Petersburg in a show of support for Maidan Square protesters in Ukraine. Last month, he was found guilty of vandalism for the latter action, but the court ruled that he would not be imprisoned because the statute of limitations had expired.


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