[5] This included filming public sex acts in a Moscow biological museum to protest the President's call for increased reproduction, in 2008, when his wife was heavily pregnant.

[1] In July 2010, at the conclusion of a trial of two art gallery curators in a Moscow court, Verzilov reportedly burst in and released a bag of live cockroaches.

[7][8] Verzilov's former wife Nadezhda Tolokonnikova is a member of the Russian feminist punk rock group Pussy Riot who, in February 2012, staged a protest inside the Moscow Cathedral.

[12] In September that year, Verzilov accepted the LennonOno grant for peace from Yoko Ono, on behalf of Pussy Riot, at a ceremony in New York.

[18] In April 2022, Verzilov accompanied to Rome the wives of the fighters of the Azov Regiment who found themselves barricaded in the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol.

[23] In December 2022, Verzilov and other members of Pussy Riot were detained at the 2022 FIFA World Cup for attempting to storm the field to protest the Russian invasion of Ukraine, imprisonment of Alexei Navalny, and to bring attention to Women's rights in Iran.

Doctors at the clinic suggested an overdose or poisoning with anticholinergic drugs, which are used to treat a variety of conditions, including dizziness, ulcers, insomnia, and asthma.

[35][36] On 18 September, doctors at the German hospital said in a statement that it was "highly probable" that Verzilov had been poisoned, that the cause was being investigated, but that he was going to make a complete recovery.

[37] In a statement from the same day, the Pussy Riot group stated that Verzilov was still very confused, and they accused the Russian government of poisoning.