A rapper who attended a celebrity party in Moscow wearing only a sock covering his penis has been sentenced to 15 days in prison, while other attendees at that celebration last week, including some of the Russia's best-known artists have seen their sponsors break their contracts with them, amid reports that the country's president, Vladimir Putin, has shown his displeasure over these events.
The convicted rapper, Nikolai Vasiliev, known as Vacio, must also pay a fine of around 2,000 euros for advertising “non-traditional sexual relations.” Other celebrities present at the party have had concerts and lucrative spots on state television cancelled. Several sponsors have revoked their contracts and one of the attendees has been removed from the cast of a film.
This unusually rapid and forceful reaction by the Russian authorities occurs in the middle of the war against Ukraine, and when the authorities are promoting an increasingly conservative social agenda. A video in which Putin's spokesman listens to the explanations of one of the stars who attended the party is circulating on the internet.
Asset, A media outlet known for its contacts with the security services has claimed that the Russian troops fighting in Ukraine were the first to complain after seeing the images and after the photographs of the party reached Putin.
The Russian president's spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, on Wednesday asked journalists to forgive him for not publicly commenting on the growing scandal, saying: “Let you and I be the only ones in the country who are not discussing this issue.”
Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said the event had “tainted” those who participated, but they now had the opportunity to work on themselves, according to the news outlet. Ura.ru.
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The fierce reaction of the authorities, pro-Kremlin parliamentarians, bloggers, state media and Orthodox Church groups has dominated the headlines in recent days. These news have even relegated those related to inflation and the increase in the price of a basic food such as eggs.
Apologies from the attendees
The party, held at the Mutabor nightclub in Moscow on the 21st, and to which attendees could go “almost naked”, was organized by blogger Anastasia Nastya Ivleeva. It was attended by well-known singers who were regulars on state television entertainment programs for years, sporting varying degrees of nudity. Ivleeva herself, one of Russia's best-known bloggers, attended wearing jewelry worth the ruble equivalent of almost 230,000 euros, at a time when many citizens cannot make ends meet.
The blogger has since released two public videos in which she apologizes for what happened.. In the second, published on Wednesday, he said that he regretted his actions and that he deserved everything that had happened to him, but that he hoped they would give him “a second chance.”
Since then, the main Russian mobile telephone operator, MTS, has broken the advertising contract it had with it, the treasury has opened an investigation against it that could lead to five years in prison, and a Moscow court has accepted a lawsuit from a group of individuals who demand payment of almost 10 million euros for having caused “moral suffering.” If the lawsuit is successful, they want the money to go to a state fund that supports Ukrainian war veterans.
“Celebrating these types of events at a time when our boys are dying in the special military operation [la denominación oficial rusa para la guerra de Ucrania] and many children losing their parents is cynical,” said Yekaterina Mizulina, director of the Russian League for Safe Internet, an organization founded with the support of the authorities. “Our soldiers on the front are definitely not fighting for this,” Mizulina concluded.
Many of the party's famous participants have released apology videos, including journalist Ksenia Sobchak, whose late father, Anatoly, was a friend and even boss of Putin.
social conservatism
The scandal comes at a time when Putin, who is expected to comfortably win another term in elections scheduled for March, has doubled down on his social conservatism, urging families to have eight or more children, and after the Supreme Court of Russia ruled that LGBTI activists must be designated “extremists.”
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