Dangerous Notes: How musical censorship was introduced and expanded in Russia, and why street musicians are now being arrested

From reaction to system: ‘stop lists', ‘foreign agents', 'extremism'

Although 'stop lists' of opposition musicians existed in the music industry even before the war, the practice expanded rapidly after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began. Artists who spoke out against the invasion were added to 'blacklists'. The authorities quite logically assumed that musicians could reach a wider, less politicised audience and might mobilise it with their anti-war statements. By March 2022, the patriotic media holding Russian Media Group had suspended cooperation with 22 artists who had been included on an informal blacklist, according to Novaya Gazeta, and concert agencies began inserting clauses prohibiting political statements in their contracts. As a result, the wave of concert cancellations affected Noize MC, Valery Meladze, Mashina Vremeni, Bi-2, Nogu Svelo!, Pornofilmy, and others.

Although open criticism of the war in Russia has largely disappeared under pressure, by 2024 the 'stop list' had grown to 79 names, according to Verstka, including not only musicians but also comedians, TikTokers, and Western performers such as Beyoncé and Metallica. The grounds for inclusion had also widened: the list began to feature people who had not spoken directly against the war but were deemed 'unreliable' due to connections with emigrant bloggers or artists who had expressed anti-war views. Even Kristina Orbakaite’s tour was cancelled after an anonymous denunciation referred to her as ‘the daughter of a foreign agent’.

For artists who continue to work in Russia, being placed on a 'stop list' leads to severe financial losses, damaging both concert income and revenue from advertising or public appearances. For example, after the infamous 'naked party', companies such as MTS, VK, TNT, NTV, and other media and advertising firms froze contracts with organiser Anastasia Ivleeva, as well as artists Dima Bilan, Lolita, Philipp Kirkorov, and Anna Asti.

However, a mechanism for removal from the ‘stop lists’ has also emerged. In the summer of 2023, Roman Bilyk, frontman of the band Zveri, performed before Russian soldiers in the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, despite his earlier anti-war statements. Later that autumn, singer Diana Arbenina, previously accused of 'discrediting' the army, sang a duet with the wife of a Russian serviceman, as reported by Meduza in its investigation.Among the 'acts of repentance' proposed to artists are: a trip to the occupied territories of Ukraine, donations to charities working there, or running creative workshops for 'children from Donbas'. By October 2024, at least six celebrities had been removed from the 'stop list' circulated among Russian advertising agencies and event-management companies, according to Verstka. The Kremlin was also prepared to reinstate artists who had left the country, on the condition of repentance.

Musicians’ public statements are monitored by the Presidential Administration’s Department for Public Projects (UOP), where the lists of 'banned' artists are drawn up, Meduza journalists Svetlana Reiter and Kristina Safonova have revealed. The process is overseen by the department’s deputy head, religious studies scholar and former deputy to Vladimir Medinsky, Alexander Zhuravsky, and by the head of its humanitarian programmes division, Nikolai Sintsov, who served in the FSB for over twenty years. Thus, the pressure on musicians is systemic and multi-layered. Inclusion in a 'stop list' is merely the first stage. This may be followed by designation as a 'foreign agent'.

The list of 'foreign agent' musicians already includes at least 27 names, including Noize MC, Oxxxymiron, Boris Grebenshchikov, Andrei Makarevich, Monetochka, and Zemfira (see full list in the appendix). Being labelled a 'foreign agent' makes it virtually impossible to continue working in Russia and is often applied to those who have left the country; in such cases, the measure serves to restrict domestic access to their music. Finally, the 'nuclear button' of musical repression is the charge of extremism. In late September, a court in St Petersburg declared the Pornofilmy track Turn Off the Anthem extremist material, claiming it contained 'calls for aggressive or violent actions', including against state authorities. In April, the Ministry of Justice added to its list of extremist materials the parody song Rise Up, Kursk! – a neural-network-generated spoof of the pro-Russian track Rise Up, Donbas! by the band Kuba. In the parody, 'Donbas' is replaced with 'Kursk', 'Russia' with 'Ukraine', and 'junta' with 'the Russians'; it also references the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the 'Freedom of Russia Legion'.

Once a song is recognised as extremist material, its distribution and performance become criminal offences, treated as propaganda of extremism. This practice predates the war: in 2020, the Ministry of Justice included two songs by Electric Partisans, a band led by former DDT member Vadim Kurylev, in the extremist register: Left Terror and The Star and the Gun (R.A.F.). At that time, such status was mostly applied to far-right groups. In its new phase, however, censorship has expanded to encompass a much broader range of political content. Oxxxymiron’s song The Last Bell was added to the extremist register after a court claimed it contained 'signs of public justification of violent actions and the ideology of violence'. Earlier, another of his tracks, Oyda, had been banned in Russia for allegedly calling for actions that could 'undermine the territorial integrity' of the country.

From our own compilation of 'extremist' tracks listed by the Ministry of Justice (63 entries in total), roughly two-thirds (38 tracks) fall into the category of far-right content or, in the authorities’ view, include calls to violence or civil disorder. Eleven songs were banned for their anti-war or opposition themes; a further nine were included because they were Ukrainian in origin and deemed 'pro-Ukrainian'. This pattern illustrates how the Russian authorities have broadened the definition of 'extremism': first applying it to far-right statements, then extending it to opposition voices.

The expansion of music censorship, 2024–2025: new tools and a new agenda

Although 'stop lists' existed before the war, recordings by banned musicians remained available on streaming platforms, according to a review by Novaya Gazeta Europe. TFrom early 2024, however, their removal began to accelerate rapidly. Novaya recorded only eight such cases across 2022–2023, but 43 in 2024, and another 36 in just the first nine months of 2025. For some musicians labelled as ‘foreign agents', entire albums are being removed. For instance, in 2024, at the request of Roskomnadzor, streaming services removed Kasta’s album Foreign Rap Releases in full, as its lyrics allegedly contained 'false information aimed at destabilising the socio-political situation in the Russian Federation'. In total, between January 2022 to March 2025, Yandex.Music removed over 14,000 items of content at the request of government agencies, including songs, video clips, album covers and podcasts.

The scale of the campaign against musical content reflects a shift and broadening of the censorship strategy itself. According to Novaya Gazeta Europe, political statements were the reason behind around 40% of music removals, but in more than half of cases the official justification was 'promotion of drug use'. Frequently, however, decisions to block tracks also cite the vague phrase 'immoral lifestyle'. For example, in August, a court banned the distribution of three songs by rappers OG Buda and Platina for promoting drugs, an immoral lifestyle, and 'justifying terrorism'. The term immoral may refer to sexualised content or the use of obscene language. A music producer interviewed anonymously by Meduza commented that nowadays 'the entire agenda is banned, not just politics'.

Thus, while in 2022 and 2023 censorship focused mainly on anti-war statements and general opposition sentiment, it has since shifted towards targeting the social nonconformism of youth culture, with all its thematic repertoire. This is now perceived from the Kremlin’s perspective as an 'immoral lifestyle'. Censorship in music has become not only a tool for suppressing dissent but also an instrument for shaping a 'patriotic' identity. Since 2022, it has evolved from a reactive response to anti-war messages into a proactive campaign for 'traditional values'.

This shift became particularly evident in 2024, following the persecution of participants in the so-called 'naked party' and Vladimir Putin’s public remarks contrasting 'the true elite', that is those fighting in Ukraine, with those who 'bare their genitals or show their backsides'. This speech signalled the expansion of 'moral' censorship across cultural life.

Finally, the case of Diana Loginova represents yet another extension of musical censorship. It effectively introduces a ban not only on 'extremist' material but also on songs by 'foreign agents' and, more broadly, on works by artists outside the state’s repressive reach. As with many repressive practices, this trend first appeared as local initiatives. In the annexed Crimea, the so-called State Council recommended in August that municipal authorities forbid street musicians from performing songs by 'foreign agent' artists or by 'citizens of unfriendly states'. In annexed Sevastopol, such a ban had already been introduced in May.

The problems for Naoko and the band Stoptime also began somewhat earlier. On 28 August, the group was first detained in St Petersburg for performing songs by Monetochka, Noize MC and Zemfira on the streets. Officially, they were charged with violating 'quiet hours' by playing after 10 pm, but in reality this followed the viral spread of a Bumaga video of their performance, which gained over a million views. At that stage, the authorities had apparently issued no wider order to 'crack down' on street musicians, and the case ended with a fine. In August, another performer, Anna Leonenko, was also detained in Moscow after performing a song by a 'foreign agent', again under the pretext of 'violating quiet hours'.

This time, however, a video of Stoptime's street performance and the crowd singing along with the musicians was posted by Marina Akhmedova, editor-in-chief of the propaganda agency Regnum. She pointed out that the musicians were publicly advertising their street 'concerts', which in her view meant that 'people were deliberately coming out to protest'. The incident quickly took on a political dimension, signalling the start of a broader campaign against street performers. According to Fontanka, State Duma deputy Mikhail Romanov filed official requests to the Investigative Committee and the Interior Ministry demanding that the musicians be investigated.

The lead singer was charged with organising a mass gathering of citizens that violated public order (Article 20.2.2 of the Code of Administrative Offences) and was arrested for 13 days. The guitarist and drummer received 12 and 13 days respectively under the same article. According to Fontanka, the singer was also charged with ‘discrediting the army', to be sent to court after her arrest under Article 20.2.2 expires. In a comment to the Agency, a lawyer for OVD-Info noted that a May court decision had declared the song Cooperative Swan Lake 'prohibited information' because it allegedly formed 'a negative attitude towards representatives of the Russian authorities, the president, and his supporters'. However, that ruling only banned the track’s distribution on YouTube and on Noize MC’s official website. It did not forbid its live performance elsewhere. As is often the case in Russia today, though, new 'rules' are now being established through repressive practice rather than legal procedure. According to the publication Rotonda,authorities intend to prosecute Loginova for performing anti-war songs by 'foreign agents' – Monetochka’s You Are a Soldier and Noize MC’s Bright Side – at street concerts on 26 September and 11 October. In the worst case, she could face up to seven years in prison. Following the arrests, a wave of pickets and protests in support of the artists swept through Russian cities and across social media, including street musicians performing ‘foreign agent’ songs in solidarity.

The case of street musicians is a clear example of the mechanisms by which systematic censorship is being established in Russia. The state builds institutional channels of censorship through control over the economies of various cultural sectors and their corporate structures: publishing houses, bookshops, film studios and cinemas, concert promotion, production companies, streaming platforms, and more. When it encounters non-institutional channels for distributing undesirable content, it resorts to direct, individual repressions, which are demonstrative in nature and intended to intimidate potential offenders. This was also the mechanism behind the notorious 'book case', i.e. the criminal prosecution of alleged distributors of literature banned by censorship (→ Re:Russia: Fear and The Market).

Appendix. 'Foreign agent' musicians in order of inclusion in the Ministry of Justice register, 2021–2025