MOSCOW, November 30 – RIA Novosti. Spokesman Alex de Koning said Just Stop Oil activists could do more serious damage to paintings, cutting famous works to protest the development of new oil and gas fields.

The movement opposes the British government’s plan to allow oil and gas production from 46 fields by 2025. Activists repeatedly staged protests, blocking main roads and affixing themselves to paintings in galleries.

When asked Sky News if the pictures would be stripped if protests escalate, Koning said, “Potentially it could get to this point someday in the future, yes.”

According to him, Just Stop Oil activists “do not want to do such things”, but plan to do everything possible to stop the extraction of fossil fuels. If the protests escalate, he added, the movement will be “inspired” by examples from the past, particularly the actions of British suffragists at the turn of the last century who “painted pictures angrily to convey their message”.

The channel quoted an episode in 1914 where suffragette Mary Richardson cut out Diego Velasquez’s “Mirrored Venus” at the London National Gallery with a butcher’s knife, thereby opposing the arrest of her colleague Emmeline Pankhurst.

An eco-movement spokesperson says it’s “crazy” that people are more concerned with activists’ protests over paintings than with the fate of millions of people affected by the floods in Pakistan. De Koning also confirmed there will be more protests in the UK before Christmas, which will “mostly mean roadblocks”.

Previously, Just Stop Oil activists staged protests for several days in a row, climbing metal structures that serve to anchor road signs on the M25 road around London. As a result, traffic was locked on many sections of the highway. A police officer was injured when two trucks collided the day after the road was closed. The police detained several dozen people for disturbing the peace, some of them taken to court.

These are not the first incidents where Just Stop Oil activists have been involved – before that, protests had been ongoing for over a month. They poured paint on the Ministry of the Interior, MI5, Bank of England buildings, as well as the façade of the Rolex luxury Swiss watch boutique, the buildings of Bentley, Bugatti, Ferrari luxury car showrooms, and the headquarters of lobby groups. in London. Earlier, the activists had King George III at Madame Tussauds.