Photo: BNK news agency
An independent cultural centre in Syktyvkar, in northern Russia, had its glass door broken and walls graffitied with the letter Z, a Russian pro-war symbol, and the word “traitors”, two days after Russian security forces raided the premises, local news agency BNK reported on Thursday.
The Revolt Centre, first opened in 2019, is named after the Soviet scientist and dissident Revolt Pimenov, who was exiled to the republic of Komi, in the Russian Arctic, in the 1970s for distributing samizdat. The centre often hosts independent photography and art exhibitions, film screenings and offers co-working spaces and training.
On Thursday, protestors, including veterans of the war in Ukraine and “representatives of public organisations” rallied outside the building holding a poster reading “For Russia”, the agency wrote.
“The liberal-minded citizens of our state are acting against our legitimate government, and against our citizens, all to please the united West, with whom we are now at war,” one demonstrator, head of the local war veteran organisation Stepan Ulnyrov, told BNK.
While it is not known whether the protestors themselves perpetrated the damage to the Revolt Centre, the building is already shown to be covered in graffiti in photographs of the rally published by BNK.
On Tuesday, Russian security forces raided the centre, as well as the private addresses of key staff members, including its co-founder Pavel Andreyev, a former director of independent news channel 7x7, who left Russia after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Following the raids, Andreyev had a criminal case opened against him on charges of treason, state news agency TASS reported, for “assisting representatives of foreign intelligence services to undermine Russia’s security”.
Meanwhile, Darya Chernysheva, executive director of the Revolt Centre, was detained on charges of failing to observe the requirements of Russia’s “foreign agents” law, according to independent news outlet Meduza.
The KomiLeaks Telegram Channel reported on Tuesday that the searches were related to the Revolt Centre’s alleged financial ties to British human rights organisation Article 19, which has been deemed “undesirable” and banned in Russia, as well as German cultural organisation the Goethe-Institut.