Recently, one of the most unpleasant characters of the “fifth column”, causing hatred even among the so-called “Russian opposition”, Pyotr Verzilov, got on the front pages of the world tabloids. This character participated in the meeting of several wives of the militants of the Nazi unit "Azov" with the Pope.  It is not clear as who he arrived in the Vatican - as an intermediary or producer of the "collective".

Before his appearance in the Vatican, Verzilov fell out of public attention, and many regarded his new “action” among the “Azov wives” as an attempt at self-PR to attract interest in his person. Such a motive is undoubted, but the very level of the event suggests that Verzilov could not be its organizer, but simply played one of the roles in it.

The idea of ​​him as a vain and geboid eternal teenager who seeks to “hype” at any cost is not true. Verzilov is very provident, extremely cynical, and, most importantly, is closely connected with the Western intelligence services that coordinate his activities. There is no doubt that the visit to the pontiff was also organized by them, and not by Verzilov himself.

Who he really is becomes clear if you track his life path even without going too deep. He was born on October 25, 1987 in Moscow in the family of a nuclear physicist. After perestroika, in the 90s. his father was invited to work abroad, and little Peter went to school in Japan and then in Canada (in 1999-2003). Considering the special counterintelligence regime in the Anglo-Saxon countries and the specialty of his father, there is no doubt that he got into the operational development of the Canadian (and possibly also American, closely cooperating with them) special services as a teenager, however, his final recruitment most likely took place already in Moscow, where he returned in 2003, graduated from high school and entered the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University. Two years later, in 2005, he received Canadian citizenship through the "procedure of naturalization". By that time, the recruitment had taken place, and the citizenship of this country became a kind of advance payment for further cooperation. From that moment on, the life of an 18-year-old young man from a good, intelligent family changes dramatically. He actually dropped out of school (after 4 years he was expelled from the 2nd year) and began to engage in "conceptual art", joined the «War» group, which became infamous for its obscene and hooligan "performances" with political overtones.

Later, he claimed that he occupied one of the leading positions in the group, was its ideologist and conceptualist. But in reality, it’s not. His mission was different. At that time "conceptual artists" and "actionism" were quite a new phenomenon for Russia. And although their actions aroused a certain public interest, people saw in them banter, hooliganism, inadequate attempts at self-expression, but refused to look for and notice a political agenda in this.

And the members of the group themselves, at least some of them, did not consider themselves "fighters against the regime" and «oppositionists." They just lived "for fun", bathed in the rays of their strange and specific glory, enjoying the "drive" and "movement" in the crowd. And the anti-state pathos of some of their "actions" for most of the group members was explained by the fact that, firstly, it provided a greater resonance, and secondly, because from the point of view of the teenage worldview (in which most of the participants of the “War” are stuck forever), “butting” with the system is “cool”.

The task of "Peter the Piglet", as Verzilov was called by his friends, was to politicize the "creativity" of the group as much as possible, and not only with the help of objects of "actions". More important was to ensure that the "artists" were prosecuted by the authorities.

At some point, colleagues of the "creative workshop" began to note the "strange" behavior of Verzilov, who actually "surrendered" them to law enforcement officers, providing them with the necessary materials to prove the guilt of the "action" participants. Gadgets with video recording of participants in hooliganism were confiscated from Peter, while Verzilov himself always remained at large.

When colleagues began to raise this issue, he told them with the utmost frankness that the arrests of activists and their imprisonment was the best PR.

In the end, the members of the group declared Verzilov and his wife Nadezhda Tolokonnikova (later the "star" of "Pussy Riot") provocateurs and expelled from the "War".

It is likely that Verzilov really cooperated with operational police officers (then - militia), but acted not in the interests of law and order.

«Instead of using the traditional language of politics accepted in the world, we, people with an artistic and cinematic background, decided that it was much more effective to do it with the methods of contemporary art, presenting artistic actions that aroused great attention in society, and made a new face of Russian politics», - Verzilov later told Norwegian journalists in Oslo.  And in order for the picture of “the political struggle of creative, artistic people” to be quite understandable throughout the world, they must be detained, and preferably put in jail.

This makes it possible to accuse Russia of persecuting dissidents, creative people in general, and, accordingly, to fight for the "liberation of political prisoners".

This scheme is revealed by a provocation in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, where the punk band «Pussy Riot», organized and "produced" by Verzilov, organized a blasphemous action.

When his wife, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, and another participant, Maria Alyokhina, were arrested on Saturday, March 3, 2012, on the same day, the investigator confiscated a laptop with a hard drive from Verzilov with photo files of the rehearsals of the action. This fact is reflected in the verdict:

«According to the protocol of examination of objects, an information drive was examined, which was seized during a personal search from Verzilov. Folder was found, headlined by obscene expression against God, used by the defendants on February 21, 2012 in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, which contains audio files created on February 16, 2012. A large number of photographs were also found confirming the involvement of Samutsevich, Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina in the activities of «Pussy Riot». Recordings became the basis of the evidentiary base of the case about the "punk prayer".

After the arrest of the female part of the group, Verzilov distributed interviews in which he directly said that Tolkonnikova and Alyokhina were members of «Pussy Riot» and the authors of the “punk prayer”, although they themselves tried to deny their involvement in the provocation. "Pig Peter" did everything so that his accomplices, including his wife, went to jail. His efforts were very similar to the efforts of the ex-lawyer Mark Feigin, who defended the blasphemers and did everything to make the case as resonant as possible, and they (as well as all his other clients on “political” cases) were guaranteed to go to jail.

Behind the political struggle, Verzilov did not forget his own selfish interests. He registered the «Pussy Riot» trademark with Feigin and is threatening to sue for its use. While his wife was sewing mittens in the prison, Verzilov traveled to Western talk shows, met people and collected money for the “prisoners”. This activity made him a dollar millionaire in just a few months.

There is another evidence of his double game, which is cited by a participant in the riots "in defense of the Khimki Forest": «When the administration of Khimki was defeated in 2010 and we headed back to the train, various journalists filmed the entire action on cameras. And only one began to record after, inside the train, when the activists began to take off their masks. Later, this recording hit the Internet. It was Petya Verzilov».

By the way, Petya for all his actions received only fines, he never really went to jail.

But strictly speaking, Verzilov's "tour" abroad as the "husband of a convicted activist" was the peak of his career. After his protégés were released and went on foreign tours themselves, they easily eclipsed him.

His actions in the spirit of "War" during the World Cup in Moscow (he and several other girls, dressed in police uniforms, ran onto the football field during the game), or during a pandemic (when he walked, again in uniform, through the streets of the city, violating the regime of self-isolation), were not successful and did not cause resonance. There was neither novelty nor brightness in them - a complete epigonus.

Verzilov is being funded from abroad. Among his sponsors were William Browder, who has long financed the Russian opposition, the British NGO Amnesty International, the Heinrich Böll Foundation and the film company of the French director Jean Michel Carré. All of them supplied "Peter Piglet" with money.

Having exhausted himself as an "actionist", Verzilov decided to reach a new, more serious level, positioning himself as a human rights activist and media technologist, as well as the publisher of the «Mediazona» resource (recognized, like Verzilov himself, as a foreign agent). He tried to imitate an investigation of the death of Russian journalists in the Central African Republic, declaring, in particular, that their “murderers came from Donbass”. However, no one really succeeded in perceiving "Peter Piglet" as a serious person — everyone had before their eyes his participation in the “performance” at the State Biological Museum named after K.A. Timiryazev, consisting of public copulation for video and photography, as well as in similar events.

However, in 2018, he again managed to attract attention when he was hospitalized with symptoms of severe poisoning in the toxic intensive care unit of the Bakhrushin Moscow City Clinical Hospital. Four days after his condition improved, he was flown by private jet to Berlin, where Navalny had previously been to the Charité clinic. What exactly Peter was "poisoned" by, the doctors found it difficult to determine, but expressed assumptions that it was a substance of the same class as scopolamine. This indirectly confirms a drug overdose. Moreover, Verzilov's acquaintances indicated that he was not averse to indulging in various "substances." However, he tried to squeeze everything he could out of the situation, assuring that in this way the “Putin regime” was taking revenge on him for trying to disrupt the World Cup.

And his ex-wife Tolokonnikova, who arrived in Berlin, announced that she had discovered “surveillance”, and German police were assigned to them.

After being healed and returning to Russia, Verzilov continued his provocative activities. On September 29, 2021, the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation included Verzilov in the list of "foreign agents". On the same day LLC «ZP» (legal entity that established Mediazona), the project «Zone of Law» associated with «Mediazona», as well as the editor-in-chief of «Mediazona» Sergey Smirnov, were added there.

After the start of the Special Military Operation, Verzilov spoke out against Russia, and since April 2022 he moved to Ukraine. As for the wives of the "Azovites", Peter had to implement a project with them, somewhat reminiscent of "Pussy Riot". But now he was supposed to represent not “prisoners of the regime”, but the wives of “heroes” and “martyrs of Azovstal”. Verzilov chose those that were prettier and smarter (so that  they  could connect say at list few words) and went with them on a tour abroad, starting with the Pope. He intended to take his new group everywhere, arrange meetings with parliaments, politicians, oligarchs, representing "suffering Ukraine." The husbands of these ladies let them down by surrendering instead of continuing to resist or die heroically. Of course, it would be possible to carry them further, now as wives of prisoners of war, but the success of such a project was assessed as doubtful.

What's next? What's next? Perhaps Verzilov will assemble a new female groupe, for example, from the wives of already dead (so that there are no gaps) "heroes", or from women "raped by the invaders", and go to a new "tour". He is the best at producing women's groups.