On 16 October, security forces detained 18-year-old singer Naoko (Diana Loginova) and two musicians from the band Stoptime for performing songs by ‘foreign agents’ on the streets of St Petersburg. They were sentenced to 12 and 13 days of administrative arrest, and the singer now faces potential criminal charges once this term ends. Since the start of the war in 2022, musical censorship in Russia has evolved from targeted bans on specific performers to systemic control over the entire musi...
