Police detained Pyotr Pavlensky in the early hours of Monday morning after he doused the main entrance of the building - a symbol of Communist-era repression and state authority for many Russians - with petrol and started a fire.
Footage posted on a video-sharing website from Pavlensky's account showed him standing on Moscow's Lubyanka Square in front of the vast, yellow-brick, neo-baroque FSB building holding a petrol can as the fire raged behind him.
It also showed the 31-year-old being detained by police, who later said they had opened a criminal case against him for suspected vandalism, a charge that carries a jail term of up to three years.
In a message accompanying the video, Pavlensky called his performance "The Threat", saying it was meant to draw attention to what he called the terror tactics used by the FSB, which was briefly run by Vladimir Putin before he became president.
"Fear turns free people into a sticky mass of uncoordinated bodies," he said. "The threat of inevitable reprisal hangs over everyone who can be tracked with devices, have their conversations listened to, or at borders with passport checks."
Pavlensky has carried out extreme acts before, which he says are designed to poke holes in the Kremlin's propaganda machine.
By Andrew Osborn.
Full story at Yahoo News.
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