The damage to Yekaterinburg’s Kosmos cinema building after the attack on 4 September. Photo (c): Pavel Lisytsin / RIA Novosti. All rights reserved.
One day, Denis Murashov decided to hold his own form of protest. On 4 September, this 39-year rammed a jeep filled with gas cylinders straight into Ekaterinburg’s Kosmos cinema. The building burst into flames, but didn’t burn down completely.
Murashov, a native of the small town of Irbit in the Sverdlovsk Region, was a devout Orthodox Christian and was incensed by the release of “Matilda” — a film by director Alexei Uchitel about the last Russian Tsar, who is considered a saint by the Russian Orthodox Church. Social media anointed him the “cinema-jihadist”, drawing parallels with the methods of extremist Islamist terrorists. Several days before Murashov’s attack on the cinema, unknown persons had thrown Molotov cocktails into Uchitel’s studio in St Petersburg. One week later in Moscow, two cars were set ablaze outside the offices of Konstantin Dobrynin, the director’s lawyer. Flyers were left scattered about the floor, reading “burn for Matilda!”
