Angela Nikolau and Ivan Kuznetsov have built their entire relationship on the premise that love is worth risking your life for. But on the day the Netflix Skywalkers: A Love Story stars got engaged — 1,454 feet above Midtown Manhattan, balanced on the live antenna spire of the Empire State Building — the NYPD was already waiting. They spent their first night as an engaged couple in separate jail cells, facing seven criminal charges.
How Two Russian Rooftoppers Ended Up on Top of the Empire State Building
Angela Nikolau, 33, and Ivan Kuznetsov (known online as Ivan Beerkus), 32, didn’t arrive in New York as tourists. They arrived as people who had already scaled Merdeka 118 in Kuala Lumpur — the second-tallest building in the world — after hiding inside the guarded skyscraper for over 30 hours without food or water, dodging security under a tarp in suffocating heat. That 2022 climb was supposed to be their last. It wasn’t.
On the day of the stunt, the couple bypassed security, slipped through restricted mesh gates, and ascended the building’s transmission tower to its absolute peak. Dressed in all black, they unfurled a massive banner reading “When the power of love beats the love of power the world knows peace” — and then Ivan dropped to one knee. Angela said yes. She posted photos to social media while still balanced on the spire, nearly a quarter-mile above the city.
The couple who climbed the Empire State Building’s transmitter were identified as Angela Nikolau, 33, and Ivan Kuznetsov, 32.
They were arrested on the way down and now face charges including burglary, reckless endangerment, criminal mischief, criminal tampering, criminal…
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) July 2, 2026
What neither of them accounted for: the antenna was live. Climbing a transmitting tower carries severe radiation hazards, and the Empire State Building was forced to temporarily shut down its antenna power while the couple stood on it. Emergency 911 calls flooded in. NYPD helicopters and drones tracked their ascent. Members of the department’s elite Emergency Service Unit scaled the lattice structure to reach them — and when an officer finally got close enough, body camera footage captured him saying, “Well, you can’t be up here.” Their response: “We are engaged.”
Seven Charges and a Love Story Ten Years in the Making
The couple descended peacefully and were escorted out of the building in handcuffs. They were arraigned in a lower Manhattan court facing charges of burglary, reckless endangerment, criminal trespass, criminal mischief, criminal tampering, possession of burglar’s tools, and disorderly conduct. The owners of the Empire State Building confirmed the stunt was entirely unauthorized, and — in a line that deserves to be read twice — noted that the building’s observation deck “does offer a practical [and legal] way for the most memorable marriage proposals.”
But the real context is their decade together. Nikolau, the daughter of professional circus performers, grew up training in acrobatic balance. Kuznetsov built his reputation on calculated, stealthy climbs through the Moscow underground rooftopping scene. They met around 2016 as social media rivals, constantly trying to outclimb each other on Instagram. The decision to climb together was initially a business calculation — bigger audience, better sponsorships. What it became was the subject of a 2024 Netflix documentary that turned their lives into a love story with vertiginous stakes: no ropes, no harnesses, and Ivan as the catcher every time Angela performed a backbend over the edge of a skyscraper.
The Empire State Building stunt was their most legible statement yet — romantic, politically charged with that peace banner, and brutally punished by the legal system within the hour. Whether the charges stick or get reduced, the image is already out there: two people in handcuffs, freshly engaged, 1,454 feet above the city where they thought they were declaring something to the world. In the ten years they spent climbing toward this moment, nobody warned them the descent would be this fast.
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