ST PETERSBURG (Reuters) -A teenage Russian street musician was jailed for 13 days on Thursday after she played a banned anti-Kremlin song on St Petersburg’s central avenue.
Diana Loginova, an 18-year-old music student who performs under the name Naoko with her band Stoptime, was arrested on Wednesday after her performance of the popular song “Swan Lake Cooperative” by exiled Russian rapper Noize MC went viral on Russian social media.
A video showed a crowd of youngsters singing along with Loginova in a rare show of public defiance of the authorities, given the risk of arrest.
A St Petersburg court found her guilty on Thursday of organising an unplanned gathering that blocked public access to the metro – an administrative, as opposed to criminal, offence.
City police said after serving the 13 days, Loginova would be charged with an additional administrative offence of “discrediting” the Russian military.
If convicted, she could face a fine. Any subsequent re-offence could lead to criminal charges and a long prison term.
Noize MC, the musician who wrote “Swan Lake Cooperative” and whose real name is Ivan Alexeyev, is openly critical of the Kremlin and left Russia for Lithuania after the start of the war in Ukraine.
Moscow has added him to its list of “foreign agents”, which comprises hundreds of individuals and entities accused of conducting subversive activity with support from abroad.
Video posted online shows Loginova performing the song on St Petersburg’s Nevsky Prospekt earlier this week as onlookers chant the lyrics: “I want to watch the ballet, let the swans dance. Let the old man shake in fear for his lake”.
The song does not name President Vladimir Putin or mention the Ukraine war. The ballet reference is to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, which was played on television after the deaths of Soviet leaders and during a 1991 coup attempt against President Mikhail Gorbachev, to the point where it came to symbolise the end of a leader’s rule.
The lyrics also refer to Ozero (Russian for “lake”), a dacha cooperative north of St Petersburg that is associated with Putin’s inner circle.
In May, a St Petersburg court banned the song on the grounds it “may contain signs of justification and excuse for hostile, hateful attitudes towards people, as well as statements promoting violent changes to the foundations of the constitutional order”.
While links to “Swan Lake Cooperative” on YouTube and Noize MC’s website are blocked inside Russia, many young people use virtual private networks (VPNs) to circumvent such bans.
Loginova, who studies at a music college in St Petersburg, has won multiple student music prizes in Russia and abroad.
(Reporting by Reuters in St Petersburg; Writing by Lucy Papachristou in Tbilisi; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
