Russia's internet regulator has asked streaming services to restrict access to an artist named Ap$ent after one of his songs went viral in Eastern Europe.
In recent months, TikTok users from Belarus, Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan have used his 2022 song "Can I Come With You" as the background for clips about rescuing abandoned animals.
Roskomnadzor, the regulatory body, banned his music allegedly to prevent "destabilization of Russian society".
Ap$ent, who is from Belarus and whose real name is Arseni Kisliak, thinks he may have become a target because of an anti-war song he previously recorded.
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The song "Can I Come With You" has attracted millions of listeners on YouTube and Spotify due to the TikTok trend.
Originally, the song was not intended to be dedicated to abandoned animals.
Ap$ent wrote it when he was fleeing Belarus with his wife Maria.
They decided to leave the country because Maria was sentenced to a one-year sentence in an open-type penal institution for insulting Alexander Lukashenko, the long-time president of Belarus.
She used a derogatory word on social networks, and the Belarusian authorities assumed that it was addressed to the president.
Although the song was about the experience of leaving, Ap$ent also said that animals partially inspired the lyrics.
"The line 'Can I come with you?' probably inspired by my cat Tiška.
"Somehow he knew we were leaving soon. One day he came up to me and started petting me, which was not his usual behavior," Ap$ent said.
He believes that Internet users have complained to the Russian authorities.
"I was accused of calling Russians fascists.
"That is not true. I would never use such generalizations," he told the BBC in Russian.
Ap$ent, however, thinks the ban made him famous.
"People who don't trust (Russia's Internet regulatory body) ... have become interested.
"They thought I must be a decent person when Roskomnadzor blocks me."
Ap$ent became famous during the covid pandemic with an ironic song about Lukashenko's advice to Belarusians to drink vodka and visit saunas to protect themselves from covid 19.
His second satirical hit "The Song of Happy Belarus" was released ahead of the 2020 Belarusian presidential election, which is believed to be rigged.
After the election, opposition candidate Svetlana Tikanovskaya declared victory, but fled Belarus, and Lukashenko brutally suppressed the protests.
Ap$ent and his wife Marija fled in the meantime and now live in Poland.
Despite his recent success, Ap$ent doesn't see himself as a political songwriter.
"I write exclusively from the position of a common man and add a bit of satire."
His cat Tiska is still in Belarus and the singer hopes to bring him to Poland as he plans to open a shelter for abandoned animals.
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