The town of Borovsk is 115 kilometres south-west of Moscow, and when 84-year-old Vladimir Ovchinnikov painted, in March of 2022, the mural of a small girl with a bomb falling on her, just after Russia had passed new laws criminalizing opposition to the war in the Ukraine, he paid a fine of 35,000 rouble ($805).  "The police said that this piece discredited our army. A fine for the fact that I want peace. I’m discrediting our military. How disgraceful.”

And what did Ovchinnikov do?

He painted another mural, of course. 

He painted a piece with the word "bezumiye" ("craziness" in Russian), spelt with the letter Z, a symbol representing Russia's military operation in Ukraine.

The police painted over it. 

He then painted another mural,  and again, the police painted over it. 

“First I wrote ‘Z: madness.' They painted over it. Then I wrote ‘Z: Shame.’ They painted over it. Then I wrote ‘Z: Fiasco.’”

Ovchinnikov understands oppression. His grandfather was shot by Lenin's Bolsheviks in 1919 and his father was arrested during Stalin's purges in 1937. "This topic of political repression and the closed nature of this topic, the wiping of historical memory, is one and the same thing as what is happening with Ukraine," Ovchinnikov said.

“With the inscription, I had the goal of conveying to the population and guests of the city of Borovsk that the special military operation is a failure and that it must be stopped,” he wrote, as an official statement.

​