Anti-War Russian Pianist Dies In Hunger Strike

A Russian concert pianist imprisoned for making videos which criticized the Ukraine war has died in detention in Russia after going on hunger strike, his mother said.

Pavel Kushnir, who was 39 years old, died in a detention center in the far east city of Birobidzhan, according to multiple sources. His death has not been officially announced by the prison.

Newsweek has reached out to a representative for the Kremlin via email for comment.

The Context

Kushnir studied at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, which is widely regarded as one of the best music colleges in the country. He became a soloist with the Birobidzhan Philharmonic in 2023.

Kushnir's detention was first reported in May by a Telegram channel which has links to Russia's security services, according to Reuters. The channel stated that Kushnir had been arrested and was accused of inciting terrorist activity, after he posted anti-war videos online.

Since November 2022, Kushnir posted four videos where he criticized the Russia Ukraine war on a YouTube channel that did not have a significant following.

In one of the videos posed to his YouTube channel, which was called "Foreign Agent Mulder," Kushnir says "Life is what will never exist under fascism: liberty, creation, sincerity, truth, beauty and a human face."

What We Know

Kushnir's death was first reported by a Russian news outlet and was then confirmed by Mediazona, after the independent outlet spoke with his mother.

Irina Levina, the 79-year-old mother of the classical pianist, told Mediazona, "I was informed by an investigator from the FSB security service in Birobidzhan. It was July 28. From hunger strike."

Levina also told Mediazona that "They [the investigators] say they helped. They say that there were IVs, and they somehow tried to support him, but apparently, this was not enough."

It is not clear how long Kushnir had been on hunger strike.

Peter Stano, an external affairs spokesperson for the EU made a post on X, formerly Twitter, that said the case was a "shocking reminder of Kremlin's ongoing repression." Stano urged Russia to "respect it's Constitution, release all prisoners of conscience & stop repression against anti-war protestors."

In a post made on Telegram, the independent Novosibirsk councilwoman Svetlana Kaverzina said that the public were not aware of either Kushnir's death or the hunger strike until after his death.

She stated that, "Birobidzhan is a city where connections between dissidents are not established. There was no one to tell. Relatives, apparently, were afraid to make it public."

"We couldn't chip in and send him a lawyer – we didn't know. We didn't write him letters of support – we didn't know. We didn't talk him out of sacrificing himself – we didn't know. He was alone," Kaverzina wrote on Telegram.

What's Next

Last week, Russia and the U.S. engaged in a prisoner swap, the biggest with the West since the Cold War. This swap included journalists Evan Gershkovich and Alsu Kurmasheva, and ex-marine Paul Whelan. This has been hailed as a "success" for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

There are 333 people who are still held as political prisoners according to Reuters, which cited human rights group Memorial in its reporting.

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