Russian pianist and anti-war activist dies in custody during hunger strike

A Russian activist who went on hunger strike in a pretrial detention centre in the city of Birobidzhan in Russia’s far eastern Jewish autonomous region has died, Russian media outlet Vot Tak reported on Friday, citing pianist Olga Shkrygunova, one of the deceased’s childhood friends.

Concert pianist Pavel Kushnir, 39, had been a soloist with the Birobidzhan Regional Philharmonic since 2023, but was arrested in May and charged with inciting terrorism for the anti-war views expressed in videos uploaded to his YouTube channel, to which just five people were subscribed, Vot Tak reported.

The director of prisoners’ rights organisation Russia Behind Bars, Olga Romanova, also confirmed Kushnir’s death on Friday, saying that Kushnir had gone on a dry hunger strike, in which the striker forgoes fluids as well as solids, and that “his body couldn’t take it”.

“He was always unconventional and very keenly sensitive to injustice,” Shkrygunova told Vot Tak, adding, “He had to see everything through to the end. Once, when we were about 15, we bet that he would never bend to the system, and he didn’t, so he won.”

Kushnir’s is the second death of an avowed opponenet of the war in Ukraine in Russian prisons this week. On Wednesday, it was announced that Ukrainian prisoner of war Alexander Ishchenko had died in a pretrial detention centre in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don. The date and cause of his death have not been disclosed.

Ishchenko, who was 55 and married, joined the Azov Brigade, a detachment of Ukraine’s National Guard, as a military driver following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and had been defending the now Russian-occupied city of Mariupol when he was captured by Russian troops.