“Shut the hell up, or...” reads this graffiti outside the activist’s apartment. “Yaroslav Nikitenko lived here”, reads the gravestone. Photo courtesy of Yaroslav Nikitenko.On 12 April, Yaroslav Nikitenko woke up to a frightening sight by the entrance of his apartment: graffiti reading “Shut the hell up or…”, the phrase accompanied by a drawing of a gravestone bearing Nikitenko's name. It was encircled by black crosses.
Nikitenko, a 29-year old physicist working at the Institute for Nuclear Research at the Russian Academy of Sciences, had spent the last months campaigning against the building of a luxury residential complex at 21 Zhivopisnaya street. It’s a great location, by the Moskvoretsky pine forest, on the banks of the Moscow river. Of course, such a project attracts powerful people. And Nikitenko is sure that his campaign against this project is the reason behind this death threat.
Nikitenko is a seasoned activist, having fought alongside the renowned ecological protester Evgenia Chirikova to oppose a planned Moscow-St Petersburg highway through the Khimki forest in northwest Moscow. Although the highway was built, and Chirikova left the country after harassment, the hard-fought campaign against it encouraged further civic activism in Russia. In 2012, Nikitenko was detained for ten days after taking part in an opposition protest.
