After members of the St. Petersburg street band Stoptime were arrested, Russian TikTok saw a sharp rise in videos supporting them. The group had performed on the streets of St. Petersburg and gained attention through clips posted by the musicians and their listeners. On October 16, the performers were detained in a case over organizing a “mass presence of citizens,” and each received 12 to 13 days of arrest. The band’s leader, Diana Loginova, who performed under the name Naoko, was also charged in two counts under the article on “discrediting” the army for singing Noize MC’s “Svetlaya Polosa” and Monetochka’s “Ty Soldat”.
According to the outlet Rotonda, citing the head of the St. Petersburg courts’ press service, one police report referred to a social media post by a Noize MC fan who wrote that he had played “Svetlaya Polosa” during a drone attack and felt the artist’s support.
After that, dozens of TikTok videos set to songs by Noize MC and Monetochka began to gain traction, with individual clips collecting from hundreds of thousands to one million views. Users posted recordings of street performances, drawings of Naoko in handcuffs, and edited footage of her arrest. Comments included both expressions of solidarity and comparisons between the singer’s heart gesture in court and a well-known photo of Alexei Navalny.
People interviewed by Novaya-Europe who created such posts said they understood the risks but still considered it important to speak publicly against censorship. One interviewee said she usually posted non-political drawings but chose to support Stoptime because the accusations seemed plainly unfair. Another, a journalism student, said she started making political videos because it was the only form of response currently available to her.
Support also moved beyond social media. In Yekaterinburg and other cities, people began performing the same songs in public. One musician using the name Zhenka Radost was detained after singing “Kooperativ ‘Lebedinoye Ozero’” and received 14 days of administrative arrest. At the same time, TikTok also saw response videos condemning the campaign, which, according to the outlet’s interviewees, revealed marked polarization among young people.