Caricaturist, Critic of Putin Shot Dead in Poland

Robert Kuzovkov, also known as Semyon Skrepetsky, posted a video on his YouTube channel over the weekend in which he threw a Russian flag into a garbage bin.

Robert Kuzovkov—an artist who used the pseudonym Semyon Skrepetsky—poses for a photo with one of his paintings, days before he was fatally shot in Poland, outside the Russian Embassy in Berlin, Germany, on June 12, 2026. Vasily Krestyaninov/SOTA via AP

An artist who specialized in caricatures of Russian President Vladimir Putin and other leaders was shot dead near his home in eastern Poland, prosecutors said on June 16.

Polish prosecutors in the city of Biala Podlaska, 20 miles from the Belarusian border, identified him, in accordance with the country’s privacy laws, as 44-year-old Robert K.

The Polish media named him as Robert Kuzovkov, a Russian national who used the pseudonym Semyon Skrepetsky.

The Polish prosecutors have not directly accused Moscow, and neither has the government in Warsaw.

The prosecutors said a gunman approached Kuzovkov near his home at 9:45 a.m. on June 14. Two shots were fired at him, and when he fell to the ground, three more shots were fired at close range. He suffered gunshot wounds to the chest, back, and head.

Two Belarusian citizens, aged 33 and 37, were arrested near a Belarusian Consulate in Biala Podlaska after the killing on June 15, said the prosecutors.

In a statement, the prosecutors said Kuzovkov “expressed criticism of the current policies of the Russian authorities.”

Dumped Russian Flag in Trash

On June 14, Kuzovkov posted a video on his YouTube channel showing him staging a one-man protest outside the Russian Embassy in Berlin on June 12, which is Russia Day, a public holiday. Then he puts the Russian flag in a trash can.

The artist is understood to have painted caricatures of Putin, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, and several high-ranking Russian officials.

One painting showed a petite Putin being cradled in the arms of Joseph Stalin, the communist dictator of the Soviet Union.

Investigators told Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza the killer must have been a professional assassin and used a silenced weapon.

Jacek Dobrzynski, a spokesman ‌for Poland’s special services minister, said Poland’s Internal Security Agency was working closely with ⁠police and prosecutors in Biala Podlaska.

In 2024, Poland’s national prosecutor said police arrested a Polish man who they said was involved in a plot to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Trump: ‘Russia Should Make a Deal’

On June 16, U.S. President Donald Trump met Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the G7 summit in France and urged Putin to end the war.

“Russia should make a deal,” Trump said. “Russia has lost tremendous amounts of people and so has Ukraine.”

Russia has previously been accused of assassinating or trying to kill its opponents abroad, including Alexander Litvinenko, who was poisoned in London in 2006, and Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, who was gunned down in Berlin in 2019.

In December 2025, a public inquiry in Britain also accused Putin of personally ordering an operation to try to kill a former Russian agent, Sergei Skripal, in Salisbury, England. A British woman, Dawn Sturgess, died after inhaling the nerve agent Novichok, which had been given to her by her boyfriend after he found what he believed was a discarded perfume bottle.

In February 2024, a Russian helicopter pilot who defected, Maxim Kuzminov, was shot dead near Alicante, Spain. In December 2025, the Spanish prosecutors closed their investigation after failing to identify the suspects.

Four people were detained by French police in October 2025 over an alleged plot to kill Vladimir Osechkin, a Russian human rights activist.

Then, in April this year, the authorities in Vilnius said they had foiled a plot to kill a Lithuanian activist who had backed Ukraine in the conflict with Russia, and a second individual, a supporter of the Bashkir ethnic minority in Russia.

The German authorities have also broken up plots targeting a Ukrainian military official and Armin Papperger, the CEO of Rheinmetall, a key German weapons supplier to Kyiv.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.