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Culture

Russian authorities detain 18 year-old singer additional 13 days for 'petty hooliganism'

2 min read
Russian authorities detain 18 year-old singer additional 13 days for 'petty hooliganism'
A police officer escorts Diana Loginova, vocalist of the band Stoptime, performing under the stage name Noako, in handcuffs into the courtroom after she was detained for publicly performing songs by foreign agents and a song by Noize MC banned for distribution. (Photo by Andrei Bok/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Diana Loginova, the 18-year-old singer of Stoptime, has been sentenced by a St. Petersburg court to an additional 13 days of administrative detention for "petty hooliganism," independent Russian outlet Mediazona reported on Oct. 29.

Loginova's bandmate, guitarist Alexander Orlov, has also been sentenced to an additional 13 days of administrative detention. The band's drummer, Vladislav Leontyev, may also face an additional sentence.

St. Petersburg police first detained Loginova, who performs under the stage name Naoko,  on Oct. 15 after a video of her and her fellow bandmates performing anti-Kremlin songs by artists designated as "foreign agents" went viral.

Appearing in court on Oct. 28 after serving her initial detention, Loginova was fined 30,000 rubles ($375) and refused to admit any wrongdoing.

The latest detention on the charge of "petty hooliganism," in addition to the charge of "organizing a rally," concerns the curse words in Russian artist Noize MC's songs, which Stoptime has performed.

None of the Noize MC songs performed by Stoptime — nor any of the other songs by so-called "foreign agents" — make direct reference to Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine.

However, St. Petersburg authorities declared that Noize MC’s music "discredits" the Russian military and fosters a "negative assessment" of the country’s full-scale war because of a comment on the artist’s social media page in which a Ukrainian fan wrote that they listened to his song "Bright Streak" during a Russian drone attack on Kyiv and "felt his support," local independent media outlet Rotonda reported on Oct. 20.

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Kate Tsurkan

Culture Reporter

Kate Tsurkan is a reporter at the Kyiv Independent who writes mostly about culture-related topics. Her newsletter Explaining Ukraine with Kate Tsurkan, which focuses specifically on Ukrainian culture, is published weekly by the Kyiv Independent and is partially supported by a generous grant from the Nadia Sophie Seiler Fund. Kate co-translated Oleh Sentsov’s “Diary of a Hunger Striker,” Myroslav Laiuk’s “Bakhmut,” Andriy Lyubka’s “War from the Rear,” and Khrystia Vengryniuk’s “Long Eyes,” among other books. Some of her previous writing and translations have appeared in the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Harpers, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. She is the co-founder of Apofenie Magazine and, in addition to Ukrainian and Russian, also knows French.

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