After his initial capture, Zakharov was brought to a basement cell where he says a woman wearing a balaclava and speaking with "a clear Russian accent" was tasked with beating and torturing the detainees.
<Photo: Serhiy Zakharov's most famous installation
By Dmitry Volchek and Glenn Kates for RFE/RL, October 20, 2014
Donetsk artist Serhiy Zakharov once preferred the bright rays of the July sun to the faint gaze of the midnight moon -- at least when it came time to set up his street installations mocking pro-Russian separatists.
"It wasn't realistic to do it at night, because there weren't people, just armed separatists driving around," Zakharov told RFE/RL's Russian Service from Kyiv, where he's moved after a month and a half as a captive of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic. "I would quickly scope out a location, set up my work, have the photographer take a picture, then we'd call it a day and get out of there."
Without the time to stencil his images into Donetsk's many facades, he would construct painted plywood cutouts in advance.
But when the artworks -- which included former insurgent commander Igor Strelkov holding a gun to his head above the Nike catchphrase, "Just Do It" -- went viral, the artist's situation became more precarious.
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