A senior citizen has been detained in Russia for attempting to install a plaque commemorating Richard Nixon’s visit to a small mining town dating back 70 years.
Vice President Richard Nixon traveled to Degtyarsk in 1959 as part of his visit to the Soviet Union, which culminated in his so-called “Kitchen Debate” with Nikita Khrushchev. Local lore claims that Nixon had spent his teens in the small town, where his parents had allegedly worked, in the mid-to-late 1920s.
Pyotr Kikilyk, 75, wanted to commemorate Nixon’s 1959 visit to Degtyarsk with a granite plaque over the weekend at the building of the Degtyarsk Mining Administration, signed: “from the grateful residents of Degyarsk and the Urals.”
![Pyotr Kikilyk Sergey Zykov / Facebook](https://static.themoscowtimes.com/image/1360/eb/66914306_2144081242368849_7407242212343283712_n-2.jpg)
Another local activist in support of the plaque called it “an act of friendship."
“We want to restore relations between our peoples; we used to have normal cooperation with the U.S.A., which greatly helped us during World War II,” he was cited as saying by the mstrok.ru local news website.
![](https://static.themoscowtimes.com/image/1360/2c/959f1261d15ca9c54f44154b2f09818d.jpg)
Local police, however, had other plans. They detained Kiklyk at the ceremony and charged him with organizing an unauthorized event, the OVD-Info police monitoring website reported, citing a human rights activist. Police reportedly seized the plaque and kept Kikliyk overnight.
Municipal authorities had earlier denied Kikilyk and his team permission to hold the ceremony.
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