Russian teen busker jailed for third time for singing anti-war songs

Saint Petersburg – A Russian court sent an 18-year-old street musician who performed anti-war songs to jail for the third time on Tuesday, as the Kremlin mounts an unrestricted crackdown on any sign of dissent or opposition.

All public criticism of the current large-scale Moscow attack invasion of ukrainePresident Vladimir Putin or the military are prohibited under radical censorship laws which human rights groups have compared to those of the Soviet Union.

Diana Loginova, a music student known by the stage name Naoko, was arrested last month after performing street concerts reciting songs by exiled Russian artists Monetochka and Noize MC in St. Petersburg.

The performances went viral, garnering attention at a time when public opposition to the Kremlin and the war in Ukraine is virtually non-existent.

She has already served two 13-day sentences, and was rearrested and charged with new crimes immediately after both releases.

Human rights lawyers have said the singer is now trapped in a prison “carousel,” a practice whereby prosecutors launch a series of lesser charges against defendants to keep them in constant custody.

In the latest case, she was found guilty of organizing a mass gathering of people and sentenced to another 13 days in prison, an News correspondent reported from the St. Petersburg court.

Since Loginova’s arrest, a flood of videos in support of her and her band Stoptime have flooded TikTok, while other young street artists have expressed their solidarity with her in public, risking fines or jail sentences.

The group’s guitarist, Alexander Orlov, was also jailed for another 13 days. In court, he sat between his lawyer and a masked police officer.

Street singers in other Russian cities who performed in support of Loginova also faced arrest.

A day earlier, independent media reported that a court in the city of Perm, more than 1,500 kilometers east of Saint Petersburg, sentenced artist Yekaterina Romanova, 20, to 15 days in prison.

Romanova, also known as Yekaterina Ostasheva, had acted in support of Loginova in Perm and had already been sentenced to seven days in jail earlier this month.

Thousands of people have been detained since Russia banned criticism of the military shortly after launching its attack on Ukraine in February 2022.