Russia's Vesti news network has the incredible story of how an ultra-liberal star wound up sharing bunks with Muslim terrorists outside Paris
pavlensky burning door FSB
You may remember Russian performance artist Petr Pavlensky from such daring 'art' as sewing his lips shut in protest over the arrest of 'edgy' punk band Pussy Riot, cutting off his earlobe with a chef's knife while sitting naked on the roof of the Serbsky Center to protest political abuse of psychiatry in Russia, and nailing his scrotum to Red Square's cobblestone paving ("A naked artist, looking at his testicles nailed to the cobblestone is a metaphor of apathy, political indifference, and fatalism of Russian society," he said in a press statement).

Celebrated among liberal intelligentsia at home and abroad, Pavlensky's last major stunt in Russia - in 2015 - was to set an entrance to the FSB HQ on fire, an offense for which he was fined. In 2017, he fled to France with his partner and their two children after being accused of sexual assault by a Moscow actress. There he received political asylum, and was feted in Paris as a champion of freedom persecuted by Big Mad Vlad.

Until a repeat performance of the FSB stunt at an entrance to the Banque de France landed him in one of the worst prisons in Europe...