Graffiti in Russia

In the preview video, Petro, a judge for the competition part of the festival, shows in how he expects writers participating to "simply go off and get creative", by freestyling some futurist outlines, doing a blind folded one-liner piece, and a throwing up some handstyle alphabets.

Since the collapse of the Berlin Wall, statues celebrating communist rule have been easy targets for graffiti artists living in the former Soviet block.

An example of this is the Russian Red Army soldiers on a monument in Sofia, Bulgaria, which has been turned into popular superheroes and cartoon characters (including Superman, Santa Claus, Ronald McDonald, and the Joker) by an anonymous graffiti artist.

[citation needed] As a protest to the heightened security in St Petersberg due to the 2011 International Economic Forum, Voina (meaning "War") - a graffiti group - painted a huge phallus on the Liteiny Bridge.

In a published document, the Human Rights Bureau referred to the graffiti as a "glaring problem", and explained that "nationalistic slogans and symbols are dangerous since they are insulting and, also, inspire people with fear for their safety as well as for the future of the country".

Pavel 183's pieces in the Moscow area share similarities with Banksy's in that they appear on median dividers, walls, bridges, and mixed media installations.

[11] Vova Chernyshev and his friends created a series of tram graffiti pieces in Nizhny Novgorod in their local train yard.