Fifty-three-year-old artist Andrei Akuzin has died by suicide in a pretrial detention center in the city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur in the Russian Far East, according to a report by the independent outlet Mediazona, citing his friend, theater director Tatyana Frolova, who lives in France.
According to Frolova, Akuzin was detained on April 2 over an online comment he had left in 2025. “He was no terrorist, that’s simply absurd. He just didn’t want to stay silent — formally, they took him [in] for some kind of like or reply to some post,” Frolova said.
The outlet noted that one Telegram bot that analyzes users’ public activity indicated that Akuzin had shown interest in protest-related topics and in the Artpodgotovka movement, which is banned in Russia.
Akuzin turned 53 on April 7. The next day, according to acquaintances who spoke with Frolova, he hanged himself in his detention cell. He was added to Russia’s list of “terrorists and extremists” only on April 10, after his death. According to Frolova, Akuzin did not have a lawyer.
The artist’s friend also said that in private correspondence Akuzin had declared “the only free protest today is suicide.”
Akuzin was known in Komsomolsk-on-Amur as an artist. In the 2000s, the city hosted a solo exhibition of his work inspired by Zen Buddhism, which he discussed in a local television report. Later, he worked as a production designer at a drama theater, and in 2021 he opened his own digital printing business, Mediazona reported.
Akuzin’s name also appeared in leaked databases of “opposition figures.” At the same time, his personal Instagram contained almost no political statements, save for a post from July 2022 in which he filmed an orchestra performing a military march in a square in Komsomolsk-on-Amur and captioned the video “No to war.”
