Moscow Man Nails Testicles To Red Square Cobblestone Street To Protest Putin’s Crackdown

In Russia today, a Moscow political performance artist was arrested after he drove a large nail through his testicles into a cobblestone street in Red Square to protest Vladimir Putin‘s crackdown on civil rights — and the Russian people’s own apathy.

Pyotr Pavlensky can be seen in the video below sitting naked in front of the Lenin’s Mausoleum and nailed to the street. Later, a police officer comes to arrest him. He reportedly could get 15 days in jail.

Pavlensky says his “action can be seen as a metaphor of apathy and political indifference and fatalism of the modern Russian society,” according to a Google translation of what he wrote on the Russian website, Grani.ru.