The court fined an 85-year-old street artist for anti-war graffiti

The court in Borovsk imposed a fine of 35,000 rubles on 85-year-old Vladimir Ovchinnikov for the anti-war graffiti “Politics of Meat Grinder”. The street artist was found guilty under the article about discrediting the army. As the “7×7” artist said, the police did not examine the drawing, and the judge did not comment on her decision in any way.

On the graffiti, Ovchinnikov depicted two meat grinders grinding people. One with the inscription “1937” is a symbol of Soviet repression, which destroyed the most educated people of the country. The second is with the letter Z, as a reminder that this lesson has not been learned in modern times.

This is not the artist’s first anti-war graffiti. In April 2022, the Borovsky District Court found Ovchinnikov guilty of discrediting the Russian army and fined him 35,000 rubles for the image of a girl in blue-and-yellow clothes of the colors of the Ukrainian flag with bombs falling on her.

Despite the fines, Ovchinnikov continues to paint anti-war graffiti on the walls of a building in Borovsk. So, in the place of the picture with the Ukrainian girl painted by the police, he wrote the word “madness”, starting with the Latin letter Z, which is considered an unofficial symbol of Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine.

“I try to stay alive, not to go to prison. I speak in Aesop’s language, I walk somewhere on the edge, on a cliff, I try not to fall,” says the artist.