{"id":4443,"date":"2025-10-15T16:49:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T16:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/crowds-in-st-petersburg-sing-about-overthrowing-putin\/"},"modified":"2026-02-08T05:20:51","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T05:20:51","slug":"crowds-in-st-petersburg-sing-about-overthrowing-putin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/crowds-in-st-petersburg-sing-about-overthrowing-putin\/","title":{"rendered":"Crowds in St Petersburg sing about overthrowing Putin"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By Sean Rayment<\/em><\/p>\n

Hundreds of young people gathered in St Petersburg to sing an outlawed song calling for Vladimir Putin to be overthrown.<\/p>\n

In a rare moment of public dissent, the crowd joined street musicians in a central square on Tuesday night to shout anti-war lyrics that have been branded \u201cextremist\u201d under new Russian censorship laws.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere have you been for eight years, you f\u2014\u2014 monsters? I want to watch ballet, let the swans dance,\u201d the crowd chanted in Russian in the busy thoroughfare. \u201cLet your grandpa tremble with excitement for\u00a0Swan Lake<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The song, titled\u00a0Co-operative Swan Lake<\/em>\u00a0by Noize MC, a pro-Ukrainian rapper, has become an unofficial anthem for the growing disillusionment and anger felt by young, liberal Russians towards Putin\u2019s regime.<\/p>\n

The 40-year-old musician, whose real name is Ivan Alekseev, fled to Lithuania soon after Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.<\/p>\n

Moscow has since declared him a \u201cforeign agent\u201d, a legal designation that has been used aggressively since the war began to punish critics of the Kremlin.<\/p>\n

Alekseev released\u00a0Co-operative Swan Lake<\/em>\u00a0in 2022 as a call to end Putin\u2019s rule and condemn the apathy in Russian society towards the war in Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea in 2014.<\/p>\n

To date, more than one million mainly young Russian men have been killed or wounded fighting in Ukraine. Thousands more have deserted or fled the country to avoid being drafted into the army.<\/p>\n

The ballet\u00a0Swan Lake<\/em>\u00a0became an unexpected symbol of political upheaval in the final years of the Soviet Union. It was broadcast on state TV on a loop following the deaths of Russian leaders and after the failed coup of 1991, which ushered in the collapse of the USSR.<\/p>\n

The song\u2019s title also references Lake Co-operative in north-west Russia, where members of Putin\u2019s inner circle holiday. In the lyrics, Alekseev refers directly to Putin: \u201cLet the old man shake in fear for his lake.\u201d<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, a St Petersburg court ruled that the song amounted to \u201cpropaganda for the violent change of the foundations of the constitutional order\u201d and argued it was \u201charmful to minors\u201d and to their \u201cmoral and ethical development\u201d.<\/p>\n

Video footage of the crowd chanting its chorus has sparked outrage on pro-Kremlin Telegram channels, with prominent propagandists calling for those involved to be punished immediately.<\/p>\n

So far, no arrests have been reported.<\/p>\n

There have been other reports this summer of public gatherings in St Petersburg, Russia\u2019s second-largest city, where bands and young crowds have sung anti-war songs together, often featuring more of Alekseev\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

Under Russia\u2019s new censorship laws, any material designated \u201cextremist\u201d is effectively banned. As of July, anyone caught accessing outlawed content can also be labelled an \u201cextremist\u201d and face punishment.<\/p>\n

For musicians, the new laws have evoked memories of Soviet-era suppression of the music scene, when authorities deemed rock musicians an ideological threat to the Communist regime and forced them underground.<\/p>\n

Despite Alekseev\u2019s music being banned on Russian platforms, millions of Russians continue to listen to it in bars, stream cover versions online, or use VPNs to access it on YouTube.<\/p>\n

Last month, Alekseev told\u00a0The Atlantic<\/em>: \u201cPeople don\u2019t want to hear, think, or talk about the war. They push it out of their conscience.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also described the \u201cindifference\u201d of his compatriots towards the nearly four-year conflict as a \u201ctragedy\u201d.<\/p>\n

In another song,\u00a0Yes Future!<\/em>, he urges Russians to imagine a country free of Putin and his repressive regime.<\/p>\n

The lyrics read: \u201cThe weather will be great in St Petersburg! Someone good will end up in power; and everything will be fixed unexpectedly; the b\u2014\u2013s will be punished \u2013 no one will get away with it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Sean Rayment Hundreds of young people gathered in St Petersburg to sing an outlawed song calling for Vladimir Putin to be overthrown. In a rare moment of public dissent, the crowd joined street musicians in a central square on Tuesday night to shout anti-war lyrics that have been branded \u201cextremist\u201d under new Russian censorship<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4444,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4443","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-russia"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4443"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4445,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4443\/revisions\/4445"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}