Hundreds of thousands of Russians have left their homeland since 2022, and among them are artists who publicly condemn the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Despite being labeled foreign agents and prohibited from re-entering Russia, they keep playing shows in Asia, Europe, and North America.
As anti-war Russians in exile search for new cultural identities beyond Putin’s regime, the concerts serve as rallying points for their country’s lost generation.
Yelizaveta Gyrdymova, known by her stage name Monetochka, is at the forefront of Russian artists speaking out against the war. Banned from returning to Moscow, Monetochka continues touring abroad , where her performances attract thousands of diaspora Russians.
In her recent releases, such as “Это было в России” (It was In Russia), she evokes strong feelings of nostalgia in her audience by recalling fond everyday memories from the country she loves but is no longer allowed to call home.
During her 2025 European and North American tour, Monetochka performed her unreleased track “Ты солдат” (You Are A Soldier), in which she sings a pacifist message: “You are a soldier, and no matter what war you fight, forgive me, I will be on the other side”.
Although her songs are not classified as extreme by Russian authorities, performing them in Russia is hazardous. “You Are A Soldier” was one of the songs street musician Naoko sang on the streets of St. Petersburg in the fall of 2025, leading to a jail sentence and ultimately prompting her to flee the country.
She has now joined the performing diaspora with her band Stoptime, including a performance in Vilnius with Monetochka in December.
The touring musicians also include Russian artist Ivan Alekseyev, who goes by the stage name Noize MC, and Russian-British rapper Miron Fyodorov, known as Oxxxymoron, who started embedding political slogans in their songs long before 2022.
Noize MC has been a target of censorship, political persecution, and harassment since 2010. He has repeatedly called out state corruption, condemned the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, and vocally supported opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who was murdered in prison in February 2024.
Oxxxymoron, whose lyrics have often featured political themes, had six sold-out arena concerts scheduled in Russia in 2022. He abruptly cancelled them after the full-scale invasion and set out on a “Russians Against War” tour, from which all proceeds went to Ukrainian charities.
Beginning in Istanbul in March 2022, his performances became hubs for anti-war Russians in search of similarly minded people. Belarusian artist Max Korzh has since followed in his footsteps, selling out arenas across Europe in 2026 for shows where audience members with Russian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian flags sang together as Korzh called for an end to the war.
The rapper Alisher Morganshtern, who performs using just his surname, was regarded as one of Russia’s biggest artists prior to 2022 and seen as politically neutral. His status hastily changed with the release of a video in March 2022 in which he condemned the full-scale invasion. He now lives in Israel and tours his music around the world.
The Kremlin’s paranoia about music is such that even Soviet-era children’s songs are being politicized. In August, Yabloko, the only anti-war party running in Russia’s general election, appeared before the Supreme Court in Moscow after a petition by the pro-Kremlin Rodina party.
One of Rodina’s complaints was that Yabloko candidates had quoted lyrics from a 1962 Soviet children’s song “May There Always Be Sunshine,” which contains lines such as “Do you hear, soldier? People are afraid of explosions,” and “Against trouble, against war, let us stand up for our boys! Sunshine, forever! Happiness, forever!”
The son of Arkady Ostrovsky, the song’s composer, gave Yabloko permission to cite lyrics from the song, but Rodina still argued there were legal grounds to ban the party from fielding candidates. They cited a 2022 ruling that blocked parties for using short quotes from literary works in their campaigns.
Ultimately, Rodina’s argument was accepted, and the song was used as a pretext to disqualify Yabloko from the election.
Russians in exile mourned the fact that the political climate has narrowed to the point where basic human desires, such as peace and joy, are treated as acts of dissent. Comments under social media posts of old performances of the song included “today, this is extremism” and “for this song, they can jail you for five years.”
In contrast to the artists outside Russia loudly opposing the war, performers who celebrate Putin’s political agenda are boosted by Russian state channels. Singers such as Mia Boyka, whose songs trend on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram, have enjoyed a surge in popularity since 2024, when Boyka declared her support for Putin.
That same year, she performed at a state-organized celebration of the 10th anniversary of the illegal annexation of Crimea. The singer continues to perform at Kremlin-organized shows and is one of Russia’s most streamed artists.
The nationalist singer SHAMAN, who openly supports the war in Ukraine and has released AI-faked videos of exiled Russians singing his songs, is also continuously exalted by Russian authorities. He was awarded the “Honored Artist of Russia” title in 2024 for his pro-Putin stance.
The problem for the Kremlin is that, however hard they hype their pet performers, young people are rarely inspired by officially sanctioned artists.
If Putin is in any doubt about the allure of forbidden sounds from abroad, he should ask his close ally and former president Dmitry Medvedev, who spent the Soviet years secretly listening to British Heavy Metal.
Ester Ljunggren is CEPA Editorial Intern and a final-year undergraduate student at Gustavus Adolphus College, where she studies political science, economics, and Russian. Originally from Sweden, her research interests include European and Eurasian affairs, political economy, and authoritarianism and democratic resilience in the post-Soviet region.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
