A Russian teenage street musician who has already spent nearly a month in prison for performing songs critical of the Kremlin was sentenced yesterday to additional detention in a case that, according to human rights activists, shows the extent of wartime censorship.
Diana Loginova (18), a member of the band Stoptime, was arrested last month in her native St. Petersburg. She had already been detained twice after performing in the center of Russia's second-largest city, where she performed covers of songs written by Kremlin critics.
A court in St. Petersburg ruled yesterday that she should spend another 13 days in jail for “disturbing public order.” The band’s guitarist and her boyfriend, Alexander Orlov, was also given an additional 13 days in prison by the same court.
Russian authorities have cracked down on critical voices since Moscow invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The Kremlin argues that society must be as unified as possible at a time when, as they say, Russia is waging a proxy war with the West.
Loginova, a music student who performs under the stage name Naoko, was initially sentenced to 13 days in prison for “disturbing public order” after her performance of “Swan Lake Cooperative,” a banned hit by exiled rapper Noize MC, went viral on social media.
That song got her into trouble because Pyotr Tchaikovsky's famous ballet "Swan Lake" is considered a symbol of political change in Russia: it was broadcast on state television after the deaths of Soviet leaders and during the attempted coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, the last president of the USSR, in 1991.
Loginova further angered the authorities by performing another song, “You Are a Soldier,” by singer-songwriter Monetočka, who, like Noize MC, had left the country and was declared a “foreign agent.” For that performance, Loginova was fined 30.000 rubles for “discrediting the army.”
The court then handed her another 13-day prison sentence for “petty hooliganism,” related to her performance last month near a metro station in central St. Petersburg.
Amnesty International said Loginova and her bandmates were subjected to so-called "carousel arrests," a practice that, according to the human rights organization, artificially prolongs detention without criminal charges by immediately rearresting individuals as soon as their previous period of so-called administrative detention expires.
“Their only 'crime' is that they sing songs that challenge the official narrative,” said Denis Krivoshev, Amnesty International's deputy director for Eastern Europe.
Court records show that Loginova is facing additional charges for “discrediting the military,” which could result in a new sentence for her later.
Her mother Irina told reporters yesterday, after the court's decision, that she believes her daughter and the band members did nothing wrong and that she does not understand why their performances have attracted so much attention from the authorities and the media.
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