Authoritarian regimes fear symbolic sparks." How a Kaliningrad resident burned himself alive in protest against the war, in an Important Stories report

“Authoritarian regimes fear symbolic sparks.” How a Kaliningrad resident burned himself alive in protest against the war — in an Important Stories report

On the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, programmer Alexander Okunev self-immolated in Kaliningrad in protest against the war, and no one learned about it.

The first mention of the self-immolation was published in a public report by Estonian foreign intelligence, without specifying the dead man’s name. At five in the morning on February 24, 2025, a man born in 1988 wrote “No to war” in the snow near a monument to the Russian soldier and set himself on fire in protest, the document said.

Together with Delfi Estonia and the Lithuanian public broadcaster LRT, Important Stories established the identity of the dead man and reconstructed what happened. Six months before the self-immolation, 37-year-old programmer Alexander Okunev had quit his job, “stayed at home and practically did not talk to anyone.”

On the eve of the suicide, he behaved “absolutely normally,” and in his suicide note he wrote that “there is another way.” “In his world, apparently, there should have been peace in the whole world. He no longer wanted to live in such a world, so he made that decision,” an Okunev relative told Important Stories.

A random passerby discovered the man’s burned body at about seven in the morning. Officials decided to conceal the incident, and by 09:15 all traces of the self-immolation had already been removed. As a result, information about the घटना did not appear in any media outlet and was not mentioned on social media.

Read Alexander Okunev’s full story on the Important Stories website:

😘 More important materials from Verstka here