A local man in the Russian city of Arkhangelsk has gone to the highest level to complain about a new public installation, arguing that statues of witches and of their cauldron fly in the face of his religious beliefs.
Last week, Sergey Samodov, the director of Arkhangelsk’s Drama Theater, shared on social media the appeal put forward by an unnamed resident directly to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, bemoaning the fact that glowing figures, depicting sorceresses, had materialized in a park in the arctic city during the festive period.
In particular, he alleged that the site on which these had been installed is the location of a pre-Soviet-era burial site of Orthodox Christian clerics.
“The idea of placing such figures makes sense, but not in a former cemetery. A citizen, as an Orthodox believer, believes that such a ‘presence’ violates his rights,” the man’s complaint reads, claiming also that, as well as bodies buried beneath the earth, there is also a cathedral.