A man was arrested after stripping naked and nailing his own testicles to the ground in broad daylight and in full view of tourists at one of the world’s most visited landmarks.

Self-styled performance artist Pyotr Pavlensky received treatment at a clinic before being taken to a police station following the incident, which he said was a protest against Russia’s ‘police state’.

He shocked visitors in Moscow’s Red Square by hammering a nail through his scrotum into cobblestones outside Lenin’s Mausoleum, on the day Russia marked its Police Day national holiday.

At least one person filmed Mr Pavlensky during the protest before police put a blanket on him and removed him from the floor.

In a statement posted on the grani.ru website prior to the demonstration, Mr Pavlensky had written: ‘A naked artist, looking at his balls nailed to the Kremlin pavement, is a metaphor for the apathy, political indifference, and fatalism of contemporary Russian society.’

The artist has put his body on the line for previous high-profile protests.

After two members of the Pussy Riot punk protest band were jailed for singing inside Moscow’s main cathedral in 2011 he sewed his lips together, and he also wrapped his naked body in barbed wire outside a government building in St Petersburg.

Where did he put the hammer he'd used to knock the nails in with?

Yeah, he's right. As soon as I saw it the first thing that occurred to me was the political apathy, indifference and fatalism of contemporary Russian society.