Russian teenager who sang anti-Kremlin songs in street gets more jail time

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By Andrew Osborn

ST. PETERSBURG/MOSCOW (Reuters) -A teenage Russian street musician who has spent nearly a month in jail after singing anti-Kremlin songs was handed more jail time on Tuesday in a case rights activists say shows how stifling wartime censorship has become.

Diana Loginova, 18, who sings in a group called Stoptime, was arrested in her native St. Petersburg last month after giving a series of impromptu street concerts in the heart of Russia’s second city in which she belted out cover versions of songs penned by Kremlin critics with sometimes subtle anti-war and, in one case, anti-Putin lyrics.

Loginova, whose performances prompted young passers-by to sing along and saw the band swiftly build a social media audience of over 50,000 followers, has already been jailed twice after video of the concerts went viral online and attracted the attention of the authorities.

A court in St. Petersburg ruled on Tuesday she should spend a further 13 days in jail on a new public order offence. Alexander Orlov, the band’s guitarist and her fiance, was also handed another 13 days in jail by the same court.

Authorities in Russia have cracked down hard on critical voices since Moscow sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022. They argue that society must be as united as possible, at a time when they say it is locked in a proxy war with the West.

Singers who are critical of the authorities have fled the country and are cast as traitors by pro-Kremlin politicians and have often been designated as “foreign agents” – a label which has negative Soviet-era connotations related to foreign espionage.

Loginova, a music student who performs under the stage name Naoko, was initially jailed for 13 days for a public order offence after her performance of a banned track, the “Swan Lake Cooperative”, by exiled anti-Kremlin Russian rapper Noize MC, went viral on social media.

The Swan Lake track caught the authorities’ eye because the famous ballet by Piotr Tchaikovsky is seen as a symbol of political change by some in Russia: it was shown on state TV after the death of Soviet leaders and during a 1991 coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet president.

‘CAROUSEL ARRESTS’

Loginova’s performance of another track disliked by the authorities – “You Are a Soldier” by singer Monetochka, who like Noize MC has left the country and is designated a “foreign agent” – got her into further trouble and saw her fined 30,000 roubles ($369) for discrediting the army and she was separately handed another 13-day jail sentence for “petty hooliganism”

On Tuesday, she was handed another 13 days, her third consecutive sentence.

Amnesty International says Loginova and her band mates have been subjected to “carousel arrests”, a practice the rights group said is used to prolong deprivation of liberty without filing criminal charges by rearresting them immediately when one period of so-called administrative detention ends.

“Their only ‘crime’ is singing songs that challenge the suffocating official narrative,” said Denis Krivosheev, Amnesty International’s deputy director for Eastern Europe.

Court records show that Loginova faces more charges for discrediting the army, which could see her hit with another fine at a later date.

Irina, her mother, told reporters on Tuesday after the court ruling that she thought her daughter and her bandmates had done nothing wrong and did not know why their concerts had attracted so much attention from the authorities and from the media.

(Reporting by Reuters in St Petersburg and Moscow,Writing by Andrew Osborn in Moscow Editing by Mark Trevelyan and Alexandra Hudson)