Waiting in a Russian police station after being arrested at an opposition protest in 2021, photographer Dmitry Markov surreptitiously raised his iPhone, snapped a photo, and posted it to Instagram.
The image, of a burly police officer in body armour and a black balaclava sitting below a photograph of president Vladimir Putin, quickly went viral. For many, it became a symbol of the brutality of the Russian regime, its crackdown on dissent and – because the police officer was hiding his face – the Kremlin’s fear of its own people.
