A teenager who led a huge crowd in singing an anti-Putin song in St Petersburg has been jailed after hundreds of Russians called for the dictator to be overthrown in a rare show of public dissent.
Street musician Diana Loginova, 18, was sentenced to 13 days in prison on Thursday after she performed a banned song in front of a crowd of anti-Kremlin dissidents.
A terrified Loginova, who performs under the name Naoko, was pictured arriving in handcuffs in court for a hearing in St Petersburg today.
In another picture, Loginova is seen resting her head against a wall with her eyes closed as she waits outside a courtroom.
The teen was charged with ‘discrediting’ the Russian military and organizing an un-authorised public gathering, The Moscow Times reports.
The court rejected Loginova’s plea to dismiss the case, and the teen denied organising a protest in advance, claiming her performance was spontaneous.
Footage of her leading a crowd singing the the lyrics to Co-operative Swan Lake by exiled pro-Ukrainian rapper Noize MC, a pro-Ukrainian rapper went viral in a country where protest against Putin and his war in Ukraine is completely banned.
The street singers chanted in Russian: ‘Where have you been for eight years, you f***ing monsters? I want to watch ballet, let the swans dance. Let your grandpa tremble with excitement for Swan Lake.’
Diana Loginova, an 18-year-old street musician has been jailed for 13 days after publicly singing a song banned by the government as ‘extremist’ in front of a crowd of fans. Pictured: Loginova sits in a courtroom before a hearing in Saint Petersburg, Russia October 16, 2025
Lyrics also include: ‘When the czar dies, we’ll dance again. The old man still clings to his throne, afraid to let go. Old man in the bunker, still thinks it’s nineteen eighty-five.’
The song became something of an anti-war anthem for young people in Russia, who loathe Putin’s regime and opposed his February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which is now threatening to harm targets in the country.
While a St Petersburg court banned the distribution of the song in May, the large crowds attest to a swelling discontent among civilians with Putin’s autocratic governance.
Loginva’s mother, Irina, told local media that her daughter was not political and only chose to sing the song because of its popularity.
Irina said: ‘Diana lives with me, she’s constantly under my supervision. I often attend her performances myself, then take her home. We are very close, and I know for sure that she has no political stance!
‘Moreover, she’s a patriot of our country, she loves Russia very much and has no plans to leave! She has no intention of supporting Ukraine!
‘The songs Diana chooses are those of her favourite artists. Her audience likes these compositions – that’s the only reason she sings them. The audience asks, and Diana performs. There is no subtext, no malicious intent. My daughter doesn’t encourage anyone to do anything and doesn’t promote anything.’
Loginova’s appearance in court comes as the Kremlin accused an exiled Russian tycoon of plotting to violently topple Putin’s regime and of creating a ‘terrorist organisation’.
Loginova appears in this screengrab performing the anti-Putin song before her arrest
A police officer is seen intervening after Loginova’s performance on Monday in St Petersburg
Russian authorities opened a fresh investigation against Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once the country’s richest man and one of Putin’s fiercest critics.
The former Yukos oil magnate was accused by the country’s domestic intelligence service (FSB), alongside 22 other exiled businessmen, politicians and activists, of plotting a coup.
The anti-Kremlin dissidents have also been accused of supporting Ukrainian units to overthrow Russia by force.
While the group have historically faced such persecution from the Kremlin, the fresh investigation heralds a new crackdown on dissidents abroad – reflecting a growing fear within Moscow about the power of opposition to dismantle the dictatorship.
Khodorkovsky dismissed the accusations against him as ‘absurd’ on Tuesday, saying that the investigation was part of Putin’s attempt to intimidate his detractors.
‘Putin is extremely sensitive to the emergence of anti-war democratic Russian representation’ abroad, he told the Financial Times.
‘The Kremlin understands perfectly well that such legitimacy for the Russian opposition could become a very important political factor in the event of…a sudden transfer of power.’
The former oil tycoon also faces separate charges of public incitement to terrorism, which carries a potential life sentence should he be extradited and convicted.
The teen was charged with ‘discrediting’ the Russian military and organizing an un-authorised public gathering
A massive crowd was seen joining street musicians at Kazanskaya Square to sing banned anti-war lyrics on October 13
Loginova was arrested after being filmed on Monday leading a crowd in central St Petersburg in singing the lyrics to Co-operative Swan Lake by Noize MC, a pro-Ukrainian rapper
He previously served 10 years in a Siberian prison on fraud charges that he and many Western countries said were politically motivated.
He was pardoned in 2013 and exiled from Russia.
Now in London, he has since backed a series of groups opposed to the Russian president.
Former Russian prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov, who served between 2000 to 2004, is also on the list, as well as chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov and opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was freed from a Russian jail in 2024 in a major prisoner swap with the U.S. and European countries.
He spent over two years behind bars, 11 months of them in solitary confinement.
All those named in the case are linked to the Khodorkovsky-backed Russian Antiwar Committee, an opposition group founded abroad in February 2022, shortly after Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The coalition was banned in Russia soon after it was founded.
Since 2022, Khodorkovsky has positioned himself as a leading figure among Russian exiles who back Kyiv against Moscow in the Ukraine war.
Former Russian oil giant Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky stands behind bars in a courtroom in Moscow, Monday, May 30, 2005
Former Russian oil giant Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky stands behind bars in a courtroom in Moscow, Monday, May 30, 2005
Shortly after the war’s outbreak, he was designated a ‘foreign agent’ by Russia.
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has begun hurting Russian citizens’ bottom lines, as Ukraine takes the fight to them.
This week, Ukrainian drones set an oil terminal in Feodosia, in Russian-occupied Crimea, alight.
With a capacity of up to 250,000 tons of the valuable substance, it is the Crimean Peninsula’s largest oil storage and transshipment hub.
Ukraine has massively escalated its drone campaign against strategic Russian targets, taking out oil and gas infrastructure in a bid to kill the funding for Putin’s war machine.
The successful strikes have massively pushed gasoline prices to record highs, and have caused fuel shortages across Russia.
Last week, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief General Oleksandr Syrskyi claimed that his forces had crippled Russia’s oil-processing capabilities by 21 per cent.
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