a singer, although well regarded by the Kremlin, becomes the target of conservatives

Her name is Olga Buzova. She is 38 years old and is a singer and television presenter. Russians know her very well: she is the second most followed personality on Instagram in the country, with 24 million followers. She also has a clothing line under her name. In short, he’s a star in Russia.

But on June 1, at a festival in Uva, Bashkortostan in eastern Russia, Olga Buzova went on stage in a black leather outfit, very low cut… Even in Russia we have already seen much more provocative than this outfit, but in the current context this has not happened: a deputy from this predominantly Muslim republic claimed that he was bombarded with messages of complaints from citizens. As a result, the local investigative committee opened an investigation and all this even reached the Duma: a deputy asked the Ministry of Culture to establish a dress code for artists, arguing that “such restrictions are necessary for a society in moral decline.”

Olga Buzova is not another artist suffering repression from the Russian authorities: she is one of the artists loyal to power. She even puts a certain zeal into it: she went to the occupied territories in Ukraine, where she was seen on stage distributing food aid; she even composed a song where she makes fun of the men who flee Russia to escape repression and mobilization.

A priori it meets all the prerequisites of the current Russian artistic scene. But no one is safe in Russia today. We had already observed this during the famous “naked party” in Moscow last December, where stars appeared very scantily clad. Some have completely disappeared from circulation since then, others have had to atone for their sins by going to sing in Donbass, in hospitals… To maintain itself, the Russian power has decided to rely on the most conservative fringe of society, the Orthodox Church in particular.