A Russian artist and outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin was shot dead in eastern Poland, police said on Monday, in what authorities described as a likely targeted killing.
The 44-year-old man was shot several times in the city of Biała Podlaska, about 35 kilometres from the border with Belarus, a police spokesman in the Lublin region told Poland’s PAP news agency.
Based on the circumstances, it appeared to have been a planned killing, the spokesman said, adding that investigators had not yet established a motive. The gunman remains at large.
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While Polish police did not release the victim’s identity, Russian and Belarusian opposition media identified him as an action artist and caricaturist known for satirical depictions of Putin, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko and Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
The artist had been living in exile in Poland since 2021.