Krasnodar Mayor Yevgeny Naumov has ordered that all karaoke clubs in the city be checked because of Verka Serdyuchka’s song “The Party”, which includes lines from the Ukrainian national anthem. related message published city government press office.
The reason for the check was an event in one of the Krasnodar karaoke clubs “La Major”, when Serduchka’s song was played with the lines “Ukraine is not dead yet”. Some visitors of the institution sang the song, others filmed it. The video began to spread on social networks and caused the anger of the authorities.
As noted in the office of the mayor of Krasnodar, law enforcement agencies are engaged in control. In the karaoke club itself, they explained the playing of the song with lyrics from the Ukrainian anthem, by the fact that the sound engineer “did not have time to orient himself.”
“Basically we don’t allow guests to sing in Ukrainian at the club. The sound engineer did not have time to adapt to the song “Walking” by Verka Serduchka, because all the lines are sung in Russian and are neutral in the text. As soon as the chorus made unacceptable meaning in Ukrainian, the song was stopped. Our sound engineer has been working part-time at weddings where this song has been sung for 20 years, so I turned it on automatically. In order to prevent this from happening in the future, additional explanatory work was carried out with the personnel,” said the director of the institution.
Footage circulating on the network shows three people at the club singing “The Party” and repeating it several times from the anthem, as it should be according to the text. One of the back rows is filming this, framing a separate monitor, meaning “invalid” lines appear on it.
Verka Serduchka (artist’s real name Andriy Danilko) has been banned from entering Russia since April last year, along with dozens of other Ukrainian artists who supported Kiev during the Russian military special operation.
At the same time, the song “Hülyanka” itself is not banned and is not listed on any recordings.
The incident in Krasnodar is not the first action taken against an institution where Ukrainian music is performed in Russia.
Thus, in September last year, the restaurant “Arpat” in Crimea Bakhchisaray was closed. The reason for this was a magnificent wedding, during which the guests danced to the Ukrainian folk song “Chervona Kalina”, which after the start of the special operation began to be called the unofficial anthem of the Azov Battalion (the organization was banned in Russia). ).
The dance was filmed, began to circulate on social networks, after which the authorities showed interest in it. Bahcesaray Mayor Arsen Ablaev spoke about the inappropriateness of such celebrations.
“We must all support the state and give our soldiers maximum support. The head of the city administration has decided that the activities of this institution will be terminated until the final actions, after which decisions will be made.
According to the control result, not only the institution where the song was played, but also its guests were punished. The restaurant owner received 15 days of administrative arrest, the DJ and dancer 10 days, the mother of the groom 5 days. The bride’s mother was fined 40,000 rubles.
The DJ said he didn’t know the nature of the song and who was using it. And he advised all his colleagues to make sure that before putting music into an institution, he did not have an extremist orientation.
In October 2022, the Tverskoy Court of Moscow ordered local resident Anton Usov to be arrested for 15 days and fined 50,000 rubles for listening to Ukrainian music in his own car. He was accused of discrediting the army and disobeying the police.
At the same time, Russian President Vladimir Putin commented on arrests for performing or playing Ukrainian songs, describing them as illegal.
“We resent attempts to destroy Russian culture and we should not behave in the same way,” Putin said. According to him, such events stem from emotions.