Last update of the alert: 22 June 2026
The Russian artist and cartoonist Semyon Skrepetsky, also known as Simon Skrepetski, was shot dead in the street on Monday 15 June in Biała Podlaska in eastern Poland, near the border with Belarus.
An exile in Poland since 2021, he used his drawings to criticise autocrats such as Putin, the Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko, and the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. A few hours before his death, he posted messages on his Telegram account detailing the threats he had been receiving.
The magazine *Der Spiegel* reports that he had taken part in a rally outside the Russian embassy in Berlin three days before his death. A video of the protest, posted by Semyon Skrepetsky on Facebook, shows him holding a cartoon depicting Stalin and Putin, and throwing a Russian flag into a bin.
On 18 June, the Polish police arrested a man in possession of a Georgian passport. According to the Polish Minister of the Interior, the suspect “is believed to be linked to large-scale organised crime”.
Tomasz Siemoniak, the Polish Minister for Coordination of Special Services, stated that the involvement of the Russian special services in this assassination was “a highly plausible hypothesis”, but that “it must be backed up by evidence”.
Cartooning for Peace is calling for a full investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of Semyon Skrepetsky, whose tragic end reflects the price that no one should have to pay for criticising an autocrat.
Read the statement from the European Federation of Journalists
