18-year-old singer Diana Loginova, who performs under the name Naoko, told Yury Dud about her musical path, street concerts in St. Petersburg, her arrest, and life after leaving Russia.
The artist said she has studied music since the age of four, has written her own songs since 13, and is enrolled at the Rimsky-Korsakov music college as a piano student. She adopted the stage name Naoko about a year ago after a character in Haruki Murakami’s novel Norwegian Wood.
In May 2025, Loginova began performing on the street. She first played in the group Nexte, and later formed the band Stoptime with guitarist Alexander Orlov and drummer Vladislav Leontyev. The musicians regularly performed songs by artists labeled “foreign agents” in Russia and, according to Naoko, could earn about 30,000 rubles per show.
“It hurt me that this is what was happening to music,” the singer said, adding that she wanted the performances to help unite lonely people.
She also said that after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, she understood it as a war and believed television coverage was false. After videos of the performances spread across social media and pro-war channels, State Duma deputy Mikhail Romanov sent requests to the Investigative Committee and the Interior Ministry.
On October 15, the Stoptime musicians were detained. Naoko says police threatened her, demanded that she reveal where her bandmates were, and told her she would have to apologize. Later, she said, she was offered a public apology and two concerts at a hospital for wounded participants in the “special military operation” in exchange for the pressure stopping. She initially agreed, but refused two days later.
After leaving Russia, Naoko says she wants to keep writing music, enroll at a university, and support herself with ordinary work. She now says she values freedom above all else and has realized how easily it can be taken away.