The author of the Kadyrov cartoons was killed in Poland.

A Russian artist who drew caricatures of Ramzan Kadyrov and Vladimir Putin was shot and killed by unknown assailants in the Polish city of Biala Podlaska.

The victim was 44-year-old Robert Kuzovkov, a native of Bashkortostan, known under the pseudonym Semyon Skrepetsky. He moved to Poland in 2021, citing the risk of political persecution in his home country, and subsequently received refugee status there.

The Russian was shot and killed on the morning of June 15 in a parking lot; the gunman fled the scene. That afternoon, Polish law enforcement released the identity of the victim, identifying him as an artist and a well-known critic of Vladimir Putin.

A police spokesman told reporters that one of the leading theories regarding the incident is "execution." "If someone approaches a specific person on the street and shoots, everything indicates they planned to kill them. However, the perpetrator's motives are still unknown to us," the Polish television channel TVN24 quotes him as saying.

According to preliminary reports, at least two people were involved in the murder. One of them, a Belarusian citizen, was subsequently detained near the country's consulate in Biała Podlaska. Investigators say he was a taxi driver and drove the shooter to the murder scene, wPolsce24 reports.

Semyon Skrepetsky actively drew caricatures of political figures, including Ramzan Kadyrov, his son Adam, and Akhmat commander Apti Alaudinov. On June 14, he commented on Adam Kadyrov's reappointment as Hero of Chechnya on his Telegram channel, posting one of his paintings—it depicted the Kadyrovs, father and son, with pig snouts, ears, and hooves.

A month earlier, on May 15, Skrepetsky wrote that Instagram* blocked his account after uploading a video featuring other paintings dedicated to Kadyrov. The artist also published videos on his Telegram channel and YouTube mockingly apologizing to Kadyrov: in these videos, he demonstratively sharpened a pencil with a ceramic figurine of the Chechen leader, simulating homosexual intercourse with him.

Skrepetsky's last post on Telegram, published on the morning of June 15, addressed the threats he had been receiving. The first screenshot in the collection contains a threat from Kadyrov and Putin.

The Chechen authorities have been persecuting their critics abroad for years. In July 2020, bloggers from the Chechen diaspora who criticized the Kadyrov regime reported regularly receiving threats. They reported this following the murder in Austria of Chechen native Mamikhan Umarov, known as "Anzor from Vienna." The "Caucasian Knot" compiled stories of the assassination of Ramzan Kadyrov's opponents in the EU in the fact sheet "Murders of Kadyrov's Critics in the European Union".