Russian officials and pro-war activists have slammed a star-studded “almost naked” party hosted by media personality Anastasia Ivleeva for going against the country’s conservative values.
Footage from the party at Mutabor, a popular Moscow nightclub, on Wednesday showed scantily clad pop stars Filipp Kirkorov, Lolita and Dima Bilan, as well as TV host and 2018 presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak, among others.
Yekaterina Mizulina, the head of the Safe Internet League, a Kremlin-aligned pressure group advocating stricter rules on what can be said and done online, called for a boycott of the attendees.
“Such hangouts are a shot in the foot of the entire policy pursued by the state,” Mizulina wrote on the Telegram messaging app Thursday. “[The partygoers] live in a different world than the rest of the country.”
“These people should be boycotted at the state level,” she said.
State Duma lawmaker Dmitry Gusev called on state broadcasters to cut those who attended Ivleeva’s “almost naked” party from their pre-recorded New Year’s Eve shows.
“If their performances are impossible to delete, alter their images and voices,” Gusev wrote in a letter shared by the Telegram news channel Baza.
His colleague Maria Butina, who served a short prison stint in the United States for acting as an unregistered foreign agent, went further, urging police to investigate whether the party violated Russia’s “gay propaganda” law and President Vladimir Putin’s 2022 decree on “traditional Russian spiritual and moral values.”
Nina Ostanina, who heads the Duma’s committee on family protection, issued a similar call for the Prosecutor General’s Office to prosecute the attendees for what she described as “a feast during the plague… regardless of their [celebrity] status.”
Police raided Mutabor on the second day of Ivleeva’s “almost naked” party that was open to the public. Baza reported the event was allowed to proceed an hour later than scheduled and noted that guests were “way more dressed” than the previous day.
Ivleeva herself mocked the criticisms, saying with sarcasm that she “loves it” when “this country, this world is not accepting of each other.”
“We look to the beautiful, slender Western models and say ‘Gosh, they’re so beautiful, they’re so cool.’ When our beautiful and fit artists come out, everyone’s like: ‘F*ck, how can they do that? Pop music has gone downhill’,” Ivleeva said.
On Friday, a Moscow court jailed Yekaterinburg rapper Nikolai Vasilyev, who performs under the name VACÍO, for 15 days on charges of petty hooliganism and fined him 200,000 rubles ($2,100) for “gay propaganda.”
He was seen at the party wearing only sneakers and a sock covering his genitalia.
“F*ck it I’ll work out [and] read some books haha peace to all,” Vasilyev wrote on his Telegram channel, confirming the verdict.
Later on Friday, Vasilyev appeared in a video published by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency apologizing for his alleged support of the LGBT community.
“I don’t support the LGBT community in any way. I didn’t intend to promote any propaganda. I condemn supporters of the LGBT movement,” Vasilyev said.
RIA Novosti also released another version of his apology in which Vasilyev added that he “apologized for offending the feelings of many people during such a difficult time for our country.”
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