Lonely death of jailed anti-war Russian pianist

While the US and Russia have been busy finalising the most important change of prisoners because the Cold War, a gifted however little-known Russian pianist was dying in silence in jail.

Pavel Kushnir had protested repeatedly towards Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and started a starvation strike quickly after his arrest in May, later refusing water too.

He died, slowly and with out publicity, on 28 July – 4 days earlier than a gaggle of better-known dissidents have been swapped for Kremlin spies, sleeper brokers and killers imprisoned within the West.

After his lonely dying, at a pre-trial detention centre in Birobidzhan in Russia’s Far East, the 39-year-old was mourned by solely 11 individuals at his cremation.

Svetlana Kaverzina, an unbiased politician in Siberia, stated no-one had tried to speak him out of sacrificing himself as a result of they hadn’t been conscious what was occurring.

“We couldn’t chip in and ship him a lawyer – we didn’t know,” she wrote on the Telegram messaging app. “He was alone.”

The YouTube channel the place Kushnir revealed 4 anti-war movies had solely 5 subscribers when he was arrested.

His “Foreign Agent Mulder” posts have been a reference to a personality within the US TV sequence, the X Files, which was in style in Russia within the Nineteen Nineties, and likewise to a Russian legislation that permits individuals thought of politically suspect to be declared “international brokers”. In one clip Kushnir even seems with a hand-drawn FBI badge.

His last movie, launched in January, addressed the 2022 bloodbath of civilians by Russian troops in Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv.

A number of months later, a Telegram channel near the key companies, Operational Reports, posted a video exhibiting masked males main Kushnir right into a white minivan.

It added {that a} prison case had been opened, accusing him of creating a public name to interact in terrorist exercise, which is punishable by as much as seven years in jail.

Nothing extra was heard till 2 August, when the human rights activist Olga Romanova and the pianist’s buddy, Olga Shkrygunova, revealed his dying in an article revealed by on-line information organisation Vot Tak.

His 79-year-old mom, Irina Levina, later confirmed her son had died.

Kushnir was born in Tambov, central Russia, the place his father Mikhail was a pianist and educator, and his mom a music faculty instructor.

He began enjoying piano on the age of two and, at simply 17, gave a exceptional two-and-a-half-hour live performance that includes the 24 preludes and fugues by composer Dmitri Shostakovich.

Later that yr, he was admitted to the Moscow Conservatory, the place classmate Julia Wertman says he cultivated a “dissident picture”, usually carrying a shabby coat and black garments, with a half-litre bottle of vodka protruding of a pocket.

Asked in a 2005 interview what composition he would by no means carry out, he replied: “The Russian nationwide anthem.”

After commencement, Shkrygunova says Kushnir intentionally took jobs in smaller cities, believing he would have extra musical and private freedom outdoors Moscow.

He moved to Yekaterinburg, then Kursk, and spent three years in Kurgan, a metropolis to the east of the Ural mountains, earlier than he misplaced his job on the philharmonic orchestra there in 2022.

Shkrygunova doesn’t know precisely why he was dismissed, however provides: “This was a cog that didn’t match any machine, and it had been that means since his childhood.”

After 4 months with no job, he turned a soloist with the Birobidzhan Philharmonic, telling native tv: “If I’m not imprisoned, drafted into the military, or fired, then I hope to spend the subsequent 12 years with you.”

Kushnir spent his free time protesting towards the warfare.

In emails to mates he described sticking posters round Birobidzhan at night time, with slogans angrily denouncing the draft, and describing Vladimir Putin as a fascist.

He additionally started staging starvation strikes: first for 20 days within the spring of 2023, then for 3 months later that yr.

Shkrygunova says Kushnir knew the hazard he was placing himself in.

“It was his solitary protest,” she says. “An act by somebody who did not know what else he might do.”

She tried to persuade him to depart Russia, or no less than to carry out in Berlin, the place she now lives. But they by no means managed to rearrange the journey.

In late March, Kushnir spoke to Shkrygunova for the final time, telling her he felt like he was being watched and that he “saved seeing the identical particular person”.

“Whatever occurs, occurs: I’m doing this for a cause,” he added.

Birobidzhan City Court information include no details about a prison case towards him, although there’s a report of a non-criminal case of “petty hooliganism” submitted on 20 June.

On 19 July, Kushnir was fined an unknown quantity, however it’s unclear whether or not he attended the listening to.

The courtroom then despatched him a replica of the decision, nevertheless it was returned on 30 July with the word “not potential to ship”.

By then, after all, Kushnir was already useless.

The unbiased information website, Mediazona, spoke to somebody who noticed him shortly earlier than he died.

They described him as “like a skeleton”, who by mid-July might barely stroll and was “in very poor situation”.

The official explanation for dying was “dilated cardiomyopathy and congestive coronary heart failure”.

The FSB and the Birobidzhan Court didn’t reply to the BBC’s request for remark. The regional head of Russia’s jail service, Vasily Mikhaylenko, advised Mediazona he knew nothing in regards to the case.

After Kushnir’s dying, his mom advised one other unbiased information organisation, Okno, that she had tried and didn’t affect her son.

“I definitely wished him to conduct himself in a quieter means and keep out of politics altogether.

“I’m very sorry that he gave up his life, apparently for nothing in any respect.”

But Shkrygunova disagrees, saying that Kushnir knew all alongside that he was risking his life in order that he might categorical his anti-war views.

“He understood there may need been one other means,” Shkrygunova provides.

“But by the point he had realised it, there was no turning again. He knew he was going to go all the way in which – so it wouldn’t turn into a wasted effort.”

In dying, Kushnir has attracted extra consideration than he ever acquired in his lifetime.

A guide he wrote in 2014 has shortly been republished in Germany.

Grace Chatto, a member of Grammy-award-winning digital music group Clean Bandit who studied with Kushnir on the Moscow Conservatory, wrote an emotional tribute on Instagram to her “mild and humorous” buddy.

And 22 main classical musicians together with Daniel Barenboim, Sir Simon Rattle and Martha Argerich wrote an open letter to recollect a “exceptional artist” they’d by no means met.

Although Kushnir’s YouTube channel had single-figure subscribers in his lifetime, his hottest clip has now been considered greater than 22,000 instances.