After Alla Pugacheva’s interview with Yekaterina Gordeeva, the strongest backlash was prompted by her remarks about Dzhokhar Dudayev, the first president of Ichkeria. Speaking about her rejection of all wars, the singer said she remembers the First Russian-Chechen War especially well, also because she personally knew Dudayev and his family.
“I knew Dzhokhar Dudayev. He was such a decent, honorable, intelligent, handsome man. And what a wife! Oh, what a wife: an artist, a writer, a politician. I am even ashamed... she called me, thinking I might help. But how could I help? In no way. Even now I am ashamed to send her greetings. Alla Fyodorovna, if you happen to see this interview, I ask your forgiveness for not being able to do anything so that Dzhokhar would stay alive, or to help you in any way,” Pugacheva said.
According to Agentstvo, that part of the interview became the main trigger for attacks in posts about Pugacheva on VKontakte. The outlet says those publications were targeted by Kremlin bots, and the commenters were especially active precisely on the subject of Dudayev.
On Wednesday, accounts involved in such attacks posted an average of 9.9 comments under each post about Pugacheva that drew their attention. That was higher than the average for posts about Ukraine, which stood at 5.8 comments.
At the same time, activity under posts about Pugacheva was lower than under publications about Vladimir Putin, at 10.7 comments, and about migrants, where the average reached 17 comments.
“Imagine that, still defending terrorists,” one bot wrote.