Pianist Behind Anti-War Videos Dies in Russian Prison

A Russian pianist imprisoned for making videos criticising the Ukraine war has died in detention in Russia, his mother said Monday.

Pavel Kushnir, 39, died in a detention centre in the far eastern city of Birobidzhan, according to multiple sources.

His death has not been officially announced. The local branch of the prison service, contacted by AFP, declined to comment.

The classical pianist's 79-year-old mother Irina Levina confirmed to Mediazona website that he had died at the detenion centre.

"I was informed by an investigator from the FSB security service in Birobidzhan. It was July 28. From hunger strike".

Olga Romanova, founder of Rus Sidyashchaya (Russia Behind Bars) organisation that defends detainees in Russia, told Current Time television that Kushnir had been on hunger strike without water "and his body could not hold out".

The team of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posted on the X social media platform an appeal to raise money to repatriate his remains to his home city of Tambov.

Kushnir's detention was reported in May by a Telegram messenger channel about Birobidzhan, which claimed he had made "calls for terrorism".

Since November 2022, the pianist had posted four videos criticising the Kremlin and the Ukraine invasion on a YouTube channel with only a few dozen followers, Vot Tak reported.

In one video seen by AFP, Kushnir declared "down with the war in Ukraine", "down with Putin's fascist regime" and "freedom for political prisoners". He denounced the massacre of civilians in Bucha near Kyiv, attributed to the Russian army.

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"Life is what will never exist under fascism: liberty, creation, sincerity, truth, beauty and a human face," he said in the video posted in January.

Kushnir studied at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, considered one of the country's best music colleges. He became a soloist at the Birobidzhan Philharmonia in 2023.

In an interview with Russian media in January 2023, Kushnir said that "art is very closely linked to the values that I have chosen for myself and to which I hope to dedicate my life."