Clad in a rather unpresidential blue parka and jeans, Roman Roslovtsev unfurls a rubber mask of Vladimir Putin and pulls it over his head. He then holds up his protest poster and walks towards the Kremlin. Tourists on the central pedestrian street gasp and point, but a policeman is not amused and stops the walking Putin after just a few minutes.
Passersby take selfies in front of their altercation as the policeman takes away his poster. Asked for their opinion, some shrug and one middle-aged woman exclaims: "We have no freedom of speech!" In a surreal scene just steps away from Moscow's Red Square, a Vladimir Lenin impersonator watches as police detain the protester, known as the 'Putin mask', and rolls his eyes: "Here we go again." Though he's attracting crowds on a weekly basis, Roslovtsev -- unlike the Lenin lookalike -- is not trying to make money. His goal is to overturn a law that can incarcerate peaceful protesters, and is likely to land him in jail. "I want to be put behind bars," Roslovtsev said, while he was detained for the ninth time. "I don't know how else to fight this law." Following his most recent detention, he was sentenced on May 16 to 20 days in police cells which he is currently serving.
A criminal trial against Putin -- even a rubber version -- would certainly raise awareness about the criminal charge Roslovtsev is riled about. Called 212.2, it can see those who participate in an unsanctioned protest twice over a six-month period jailed for up to five years. One of the pieces of legislation phased in after Putin returned to the Kremlin in 2012 amid mass protests, the law has helped extinguish street rallies against his rule and many performance artists are wary of challenging the authorities. "Many people saw a watershed moment when Pussy Riot was imprisoned," said Artyom Loskutov, an activist who supported the punk band that was sentenced to two years in jail after performing in a Moscow cathedral. "Before that it was possible to prevent jail time for artists," added Loskutov, who has organised annual May day rallies, called Monstrations, for the past decade in his hometown Novosibirsk at which participants wave placards with absurd slogans like "Porridge is evil".
This year, he said, his rally was accused of being Satanist and anti-Russian even before it happened. To try and contain it, the authorities sanctioned a parallel absurd rally, he said. "They view something that is autonomous immediately as a threat," he said. "There is less and less space for self-expression." As a result, some performance artists have become even more radical, essentially making their own arrest and prosecution part of the stunt. Most eye-catching among them is Pyotr Pavlensky, who went on trial this month for setting fire to the door of the Moscow headquarters of the FSB security services last year. He wants to expose the institution, formerly known as the KGB, as a repressive machine that persecuted artists in Soviet times, with the defence aiming to invite former KGB officials to testify on his behalf.
Backed up by the slavish state media, Putin's approval rating in Russia remains above 80 percent and government-sanctioned murals with a pro-Kremlin or anti-Western message have appeared around Moscow. Subtle ways of artistic protest have also appeared, however, with the apparent goal of reaching out to the Russian public in the streets rather than provoking the authorities head-on. One anonymous anti-Putin artist puts up posters at Moscow's bus stops, in the spots where concerts and new mobile phones are usually advertised. One was covertly hung up on the anniversary of Stalin's death with a picture of the Soviet dictator's death mask and a caption reading "that one died, this one will too." "Radical performance art like Pussy Riot or Pavlensky is not possible anymore," artist Katerina Nenasheva told AFP. Nenasheva is one of a group of young women who regularly venture out to public spaces around Moscow where they sit sewing critical messages about government policies on pieces of cloth and handing them out to passersby. "The main idea is communication with people," she said.
