Russian daredevils Vanya Beerkus and Angela Nikolau are seen as ambassadors for ‘rooftopping’, an unregulated climbing sport.

A protest stunt and apparent marriage proposal on top of the Empire State Building has led to the arrest of two people in New York City.

Video shot by a United States news helicopter on Wednesday showed two people, dressed in black, appearing to kiss on top of the iconic skyscraper’s main antenna.

They unfurled a banner inscribed with the words, “When the power of love beats the love of power the world knows peace,” from their perch, roughly 443 metres (1,454 feet) above the ground.

It was not clear how the pair gained access to the antenna, which is located well above the publicly accessible areas in the 102-storey building.

Police body camera footage, released later in the day, showed an officer sent to retrieve the daredevils.

“How are you doing?” he asked the couple as he ascended a ladder, breathing heavily. While the couple’s response cannot be heard over the wind, the officer proceeded to tell them, “Well, you can’t be up here.”

The arrested couple have since been identified as Russian nationals Vanya Beerkus and Angela Nikolau. The couple appeared in a 2024 Netflix documentary called Skywalkers: A Love Story, which chronicled their shared interest in “rooftopping”, an urban sport that involves scaling city buildings.

“Why should I be worried? I climb up roofs myself,” Dmitriy Nikolau, Angela’s father, told the news agency Reuters when asked about the stunt.

Dmitriy, whom Reuters identified as a Russian circus artist, reportedly had prior knowledge of his daughter’s climb.

He told the news outlet, “I think it is normal to climb up a ‌roof ‌in any country, including the United States, according to any constitution.”

In a statement, an Empire State Building spokesperson described Wednesday’s climb as an “unauthorized incident”, suggesting the couple should have instead bought the building’s $1,000 “Happily Ever Empire Proposal Package” to mark their engagement.