Misleading title.
The article seems to be hinting this was a Russian or Belarusian assassination, which might be true. Sounds like someone assassinated him. But if so there is a big hole to fill in the story on what a plausible reason is. Based on this my first guess would be that something in his private life spilled over, but I expect there is a section of the story that isn't in the news right now.
EDIT Also related only by the vaguest vibe, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeiweiCam is more what I'd expect for artistic dissidents and is truly remarkable modern art.
I'd call it ugly, provocative insults towards politicians and respected religious symbols in his country.
So, let's assume he was a bad artist. How does this offset or negate being assassinated by a state?
I also fail to see how "provocative insults" are relevant here either. Am I talking to a russian AI bot here?
Second, my first word was "Sad", so there"s no negation for being assassinated by anyone.
Third, I don't know how old you are, but I presumed most adults know that critics of Putin are known to mysteriously die.
These executions follow a very similar pattern. Two other I can think of are Selimchan Changoschwili in 2019 and Maxim Kusminow in 2024; with regards to the latter, perma-drunk Dmitry Medvedev babbled about "a dog's death to a dog" nonsense. Tie to this the genocide Putin commits presently against Ukrainians.
I think there is no real "reasoning" possible with the current regime. It's not just Putin, naturally, but a whole parasitic society sitting and feeding on top of this mafia structure. Naturally a direct war is not really possible due to the mafia having access to nukes, but there has to be a complete shift - the diplomatic axis has to exist (no alternative to that from an objective view) while the military side also has to be strengthened, not only in Ukraine but all countries being close to Russia and the Belarus satellite state. Putin will never change as long as he is still alive. And even when he is gone, I have a slight feeling that it is more likely that one of the mafia group will take over anyway.
- when kids from Gaza got sniped by an Israeli: "Small number of kids found dead somewhere in the Middle East"
- when single adult killed by Russians: "Putin critic shot dead in Poland"
All lives matter, for some reason, BBC is afraid of other real criminals, who might be even more brutal than the Putin (haven't heard Russians deliberately sniping kids on a daily basis)
RIP
Edit: didn’t see him holding satirized pictures of that president, almost withdraw the question
False. The article makes it very clear what would make sense as a motive here.
That is the whole point. You can't maintain a dictatorship if you let people get to the point of being a clear threat, because sooner or later, someone could slip through the cracks and take you out. You can't keep the leash this loose.
As a dictator, you must go after people for seemingly small things, such as merely expressing the wrong thoughts, making the wrong kind of art, and so on. That sends a message to everyone that even small transgressions carry an unacceptable risk, so if your neighbor keeps criticizing the government, maybe you should report them, not join their discussion club that may become a real political movement.
For a while after the revolution that established your regime, people are on their best behavior because you just finished summarily executing hundreds of thousands or millions for having the wrong views. But both in Russia and in China, it's been a long time since that happened, few people remember Stalin or Mao, and so you need to keep sending behavioral nudges in a different way.
I don't think being a minor caricaturist is enough to attract Putin's ire. Especially not when he "supported Russia in Ukraine" (by Ukrainian nationalist standards). But hey, maybe he had him murdered to make Ukrainian nationalists look worse - wouldn't put it past him.
Kadyrov is notoriously thin-skinned and could easily murder people over a caricature. His assassins also seem to prefer just gunning people down, as opposed to Putin's flashy poisonings and "suicides".
Then it could simply be Ukrainian nationalists who had him on that "traitor" list of theirs.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyrzd5g6k2o
>Video posted recently on social media showed Skrepetsky at a Russia Day protest outside the Russian embassy in Berlin on 12 June.
>He had been carrying a painting caricaturing Putin and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, as well as a Russian flag tied to his trousers that had been dragging along the road.
The Russian trolls are out in force, suggesting that he might have been killed by some confused psychos or something.
hootz•1h ago