German sculptor and illustrator Jacques Tilly was convicted on charges of spreading false information about the Russian military and insulting religious feelings, after creating carnival displays mocking Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Associated Press reported Thursday.
The 62-year-old artist has been designing and building floats for Düsseldorf’s Carnival parade for nearly 40 years. His floats, like many German carnival floats, often mock political figures, both from Germany and abroad.
One of his most recent floats depicted the Russian president in a bathtub filled with blood and painted to resemble the Ukraine flag. Another featured Putin biting into a map of Ukraine decorated with the words, “Choke on it!”
A Moscow court sentenced Tilly to 8.5 years in prison earlier this week. However, as Tilly is based in Germany, the sentencing was in absentia, and Tilly doesn’t seem too bothered.
In an interview with dpa, a German news agency, he derided the proceedings as an “authoritarian regime’s proganda trial.”
“It’s very likely that the verdict against me has already been determined. I assume it will be many, many years of prison camp,” Tilly said. “It is an attack on our freedoms. On freedom of opinion, on freedom of the press, on freedom of satire, on jesters’ freedom. And that is how it is understood here in Germany.”
Tilly last made news in 2019 when he created a custom float for Brexit protesters in London depicting Dominic Cummings, then-chief adviser to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, as a demonic figure holding a puppet Johnson. “Demonic Cummings” was written across the figure’s head, with “Master of Muppets” scrawled along the side. It also featured a Union Jack mustache styled to look like Hitler’s and a Nazi-style red arm band that read “Get Brexit Done.”
At the time, Phil Jeans, of EU Flag Mafia, which commissioned the piece, told PA News Agency it takes Tilly two weeks to draw up the plans and build the model for his floats.
Over the years, Tilly has also mocked President Donald Trump, UK Prime Minister Theresa May, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and others.
