Pussy Riot activist vanishes from flat after telling friends his door was being forced
A prominent Russian opposition figure vanished from his apartment yesterday morning after messaging colleagues to say that his door was being broken down.
Pyotr Verzilov, occasional manager of punk collective Pussy Riot and publisher of the independent MediaZona publication, went incommunicado after sending the message at 7.16am. A short while later, his landlord arrived at his Moscow home to find that locks on the door had been destroyed, with no one inside.
Speaking to Russian media, neighbours reported seeing approximately 10 men attempting to gain entry to
the apartment. Two of the men were wearing police uniform, they said. The local police service has denied sending anyone.
Shortly after midday, a pro-Kremlin social media network published a photo that seemed to show Mr Verzilov in his home looking through documents, with an unidentified man sitting alongside him.
“A doctor dropped by to see Verzilov, but he didn’t want to open the door,” read the caption, timestamped 1.15pm. There is no information about the source of the photo.
Sergei Smirnov, MediaZona’s editor, said friends and colleagues had no other information about his whereabouts. He suggested Mr Verzilov’s strange disappearance was directly connected to his work.
Over many years Mr Verzilov has delighted in irritating the Kremlin and Russia’s conservative wing. Before Pussy Riot, he was part of the Voina art group that drew a large phallus on a retractable bridge facing the St Petersburg headquarters of Russia’s security agency. In another “performance”, he took part in an orgy in Moscow’s Biological Museum.
Together with other members of Pussy Riot, Mr Verzilov helped found MediaZona, a website focused on law, order, rights, and abuses thereof. In recent years, the platform has stood out for brave investigations into the darkest areas of Russian state and society.
In September 2018, Mr Verzilov was taken ill in Moscow in what appeared to be a poisoning attack. He was evacuated to Berlin, where doctors confirmed his symptoms were consistent with poisoning. Russian authorities have so far failed to open a criminal case into the apparent attack.