12 Mar 2026 | Europe and Central Asia, News, Russia
The fifth year of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine grinds on, with its unvarying backdrop of devastated Ukrainian cities and extensive casualties among the non-combatant population. Meanwhile the Russian authorities exploit the war as justification for constantly tightening the screws of their repressive policies at home.
In the last few years, criminal prosecutions for speaking out have become common, everyday occurrences. The definitions of “extremism” have become increasingly vague, and the pressure applied to the independent media and civil society initiatives has become systemic. Alongside these developments, another, less visible, but equally significant process has been gathering momentum: the restructuring of the digital environment in such a way as to induce people to modify their own behaviour themselves – frequently without even realising.
Six months ago a law came into force in Russia making it an offence punishable by law to search for extremist materials online. This law, which was widely publicised in the media, functions as a “bogeyman”. That is, the security men’s little lamp won’t light up if you have entered “Navalny” in Google, but if they confiscate your computer and discover a search query like that in it, you can be charged with a crime. In the news, however, they don’t tell you about fine details like that. In the news they simply say that those who search for extremist materials online will be punished and that is what remains imprinted on people’s minds – that googling anything against the authorities is prohibited.
For a long time, the Russian state’s approach to control of the internet was overt and unsubtle: ban a site, block a platform, restrict access. This didn’t work well. It annoyed people, provoked resistance and rapidly spawned solutions that bypassed restrictions.
But in the fifth year of a war which, in regions under attack by drones, is accompanied by constant interruptions to mobile internet services, a solution has been found. Whitelisting. The implications of the whitelist model are simple: stable access is only assured to services approved in advance by the state. All the rest can operate, but with outages or restrictions, and without any guarantees.
At the same time, Roscomnadzor (the Federal Supervisory Agency for Information and Communications Technologies) has decided to block calls via WhatsApp and Telegram – and this affects everybody. WhatsApp is the most popular messenger app in Russia, with 96 million users. People, especially the older generation, like it because it is simple. It’s good for everyday and family use, for off-the-cuff calling. Telegram is good for other things: it’s a connection to a field of information, news, politics and alternative points of view. They tried to block it as early as 2018, but when it became clear that direct prohibitions don’t work, the strategy changed. They no longer block apps completely but simply render them inconvenient. And to replace them they offer the “national messenger app” MAX. Celebrities who are loyal to the authorities advertise it on TV and urban billboards. “Great reception even in the car park,” a pro-government female rapper declares as she posts a MAX advertising video in stories, while the other apps beside it can no longer provide any access at all.
MAX is rapidly becoming the compulsory communications channel in schools and nursery schools, universities and colleges, state and municipal institutions, as well as in “house chats” for residents of apartment blocks, facilitated by the management companies. Its introduction is only rarely achieved by means of public command: in most instances it is a case of word-of-mouth instructions and surreptitious pressure – from warnings about “unpleasantness” to threats of disciplinary reprimands or dismissal.
MAX is whitelisted by definition. It is stable in situations where other applications are “temporarily unavailable”. MAX has to be preinstalled on all the mobile devices offered for sale in the country. But MAX is not attempting to become everyone’s “favourite” all at once. It is enough for it to become compulsory. There is no attempt to persuade people – they are simply transferred under the pretext of “convenience”.
MAX’s most crucial characteristic is its profound integration with the platform Gosuslugi (State Services). This is an individual’s digital profile: passport, taxes, fines, medical record, welfare payments. MAX can be used to confirm a person’s identity or age, and it can be used as a digital document – for instance when purchasing alcohol. This changes the very nature of the messenger app. It ceases to be a space for networking and socialising and becomes part of an ID system.
MAX’s very interface suggests that it is the Russian equivalent of the Chinese app WeChat. The Russian authorities are looking to China more and more nowadays – not as a model that can be copied point for point, but as proof that control can be built into everyday reality. The Chinese system doesn’t work by means of incessant prohibitions, but by virtue of people’s habituation to limits. They know in advance what the boundaries are and they act within them. And Russia’s digital policy is gradually leading people in the same direction.
However, WeChat was never designated a “national messenger app”, and people were not herded into it by the threat of being sacked: it defeated the competition on its own terms – thanks to its convenience, ecosystem of services and the early effect of scale. Initially it was simply a messenger app, then a payment instrument, and then a portal to municipal amenities, the media, taxis and state services. The process of habituation was organic, and the infrastructure of control was only constructed around already familiar elements.
MAX was immediately castigated for its aggressive gathering of metadata and wide-ranging requests for permissions – access to contacts, photos, call history, screen – and the absence of end-to-end encryption (E2EE) by default: this means that all messages are saved on servers in readable form, creating the risk of their being accessed by third parties or state agencies.
But it is not the technical details that are most important. The most important thing is the effect: the individual becomes accustomed to the idea that risk, not privacy, is the norm. That it is safer not to discuss anything superfluous. That it is simpler not to ask questions. In this way a new model of social behaviour is taking shape.
Despite the official declarations, MAX has not become massively popular by choice. People use it because they need to. Because otherwise it’s impossible to manage. This is a fundamental difference from messenger apps that have become integrated into life in an organic fashion.
And this is the point at which the most disturbing question of all arises. The war might come to an end, but will the blocking of the mobile internet also end? An infrastructure of social control is rarely temporary. When public money has been invested in it, when it has been built into schools, state institutions and people’s everday activities, it starts living a life of its own. New justifications for it will always be found: security, stability, new threats. Not coercion, but habituation. When social interaction becomes cautious, there is no longer any need for constant intervention by the censor. Censorship is already built into daily life.
In this sense, what is happening now resembles ever more closely Michel Foucault’s theory of the Panopticon – an “open prison” in which control is effected, not by means of constant surveillance, but by the possibility of surveillance. Individuals do not need to know that they are being observed at this moment. It is sufficient for them to be uncertain whether they are. In this system the walls become invisible and discipline becomes internal. A digital infrastructure organised.around whitelists, identification and unstable means of communication reproduces precisely the same logic: individuals start behaving cautiously, not because they are being punished, but because it’s simply safer that way.
It is also important to note that this behaviour does not remain within the ambit of the application. It is inevitably extrapolated to life offline – to conversations in public spaces, to spontaneous discussion, to the way in which people speak out loud. When communication in digital space becomes cautious and functional, the same model is gradually carried over into ordinary life. The open prison has no need of bars or guards: it inculcates the habit of self-limitation. And that is precisely why such systems remain stable long after the formal reason for their appearance disappears.
22 Jan 2026 | Europe and Central Asia, Features, Russia, Volume 54.04 Winter 2025
This article first appeared in the Winter 2025 issue of Index on Censorship, Gen Z is revolting: Why the world’s youth will not be silenced, published on 18 December 2025.
It’s something of a surprise to learn that the rap music genre in Russia dates as far back as the Soviet era – and that then, it came about thanks to a woman, Olga Opryatnaya. Second director of the Moscow Rock Club, sometime in the mid-1980s she heard a performance by the group Chas Pik. Struck by their innovative funk-rock fusion overlaid with an MC’s flow, Opryatnaya invited them to record an album. And thus, Russian rap was born.
Today, Russian rap music made by women coalesces around Zhenski rap, a sub-genre that emerged in the mid-1990s. Starting with Lika Rap, the 1994 album by Lika Pavlova (aka Lika Star), women have “represented” in what remains in Russia – as elsewhere – a male-dominated genre.
But this has not been a smooth ride. And as the curious case of Instasamka, the first female rapper to be subjected to state censorship shows, double standards abound – with women being targeted, unlike their male counterparts, with ambiguous charges of “moral inappropriateness”.
The censorship of women musicians in Russia is not, it should be said, a recent phenomenon. Pussy Riot, the feminist political collective, have been persecuted for more than ten years, with five of their exiled members sentenced in absentia in September 2025 to long jail sentences for speaking out against the war in Ukraine. But their cause went largely unnoticed within Russia’s rap community.
Now the war between Instasamka and the authorities, beginning in late 2021, has added cultural censorship to the well-established category of suppressing political speech.
A vlogger and social media personality before becoming a musician, Instasamka’s older Instagram posts give a good sense of her defining aesthetic – accentuated physical features interspersed with tattoos, tropes often featured by her counterparts in the USA. Rubbing against the conservative – anti-foreign – values that have been in ascendency in Russia in recent years, it was no surprise that she would, in due course, attract the wrong sort of attention.
The offensive against Instasamka (real name Darya Zoteeva) was initially led by state organisations and civic organisations on 24 November 2021. The Rospotrebnadzor, the Federal Service for the Oversight of Consumer Protection and Welfare, cancelled her concert after complaints from members of the Surgut city Duma in Khanty-Mansia. The day after, the media watchdog Roskomnadzor cancelled her concert in Sverdlovsk due to similar complaints from local officials. The censorship campaign against her picked up, though, after being taken up by conservative parental groups like Fathers of Russia. A concerted campaign accusing her of promoting debauchery and prostitution among children starting in December 2022 led, ultimately, to the cancellation of her February 2023 tour.
Wilting under the pressure, Instasamka temporarily relocated to the United Arab Emirates, albeit in a precarious financial position – her bank account had been frozen by the Ministry of Internal Affairs due to an investigation on charges of tax evasion and money laundering.
The fraught situation that Instasamka found herself in only began to unwind in the late spring of 2023, following a meeting between her and Katerina Mizulina, head of the Safe Internet League. At the meeting, Instasamka and Hoffmannita (a fellow female rapper similarly targeted by conservative pressure groups) publicly apologised to concerned parents, and undertook to reform their public personas.
Her travails were far from over, however. Instasamka’s unapologetic pop (read: commercial) sensibilities had always set her out on a limb. In a music form that has traditionally (if not always consistently) prided itself on social awareness and political literacy, Instasamka’s peers themselves labelled her with one damning word: inauthenticity. By late 2023, the perception of Instasamka in Russia’s rap community was one of vocal disgust rather than silent tolerance, “I forbade my children from listening to Instasamka,” Levan Gorozia from rap group L’One told Index. “They need to understand what’s good and what’s bad.”
Similarly award-winning, rapper Ira PSP noted: “I haven’t heard of such names. They’re probably pop projects; all the rappers know each other.” Kima, another well-known rapper in the community, explicitly questioned the artistic credentials of her “peer”. Instasamka, she said, “is a successful commercial project. She’s great at copying Western artists. I don’t think of her as a rapper. […] A girl who raps can call herself whatever she wants, but she’s not a rapper if someone writes lyrics for her. I haven’t heard decent female rap lately that has both substance and a decent flow.”
But there is, perhaps, another dimension to Instasamka’s support – or lack of therein – within Russia’s female rap community.
As one member of rap group Osnova Pashasse – one of the oldest all-female rap groups in Russia – pointed out (anonymously but speaking for the group), the issue goes far deeper. “In our country, many still don’t take rap with a female voice seriously,” she said. “Perhaps this is the fault of the female MCs themselves who don’t focus their work on something interesting, with intellectual or spiritual themes, or even some captivating abstraction in their lyrics, but instead constantly emphasise their gender in their lyrics and sometimes try to compete with men.”
Credibility for female rappers, it seems, does not sit easily with commercial kudos. But then again, even commercial success is predicated on staying with the boundaries of social and cultural norms – which, in effect, sometimes operate as a form of artistic censorship.
***
The success of female rappers in Russia is, by and large, contingent upon the approval of a male-dominated culture and male-dominated ideas of quality. The historical antecedents of female rappers working in the genre notwithstanding, fair evaluation of their capabilities is not a given. As branding expert Nikolas Koro noted, a small fan base has a marked limiting impact on the visibility and commercial viability of female rappers. “In financial terms, the number of female rap fans is mere pennies. So, the fate of almost all women rappers in Russia is either to leave the stage … or change the musical format.”
Ira PSP expressed the challenges trenchantly. The issue, she said, is that “we are neither heard nor seen. The girls and I have dedicated our lives to culture, but there is no [financial] return.”
So, where is Zhenski rap heading? The balance that its practitioners must try to strike can be found somewhere between the desire to be seen as “authentic” (legitimate in the eyes of the rap community) and being themselves. They must appeal to both the dominant cultural norms within rap and assert their individuality, as women and as rappers. In the 2000s, this meant balancing skill, sex-appeal, and objectification, which only become more pronounced from the 2010s on. And they, of course, must take into account the very real prospect of censorship – creative or cultural, by peers or by the state.
The Instasamka saga did not end with her apology of 2023. After another scheduled tour was cancelled in 2024, on the grounds of her “provocative appearance”, Instasamka finally threw in the towel, declaring that she would rebrand herself and embrace a more socially acceptable demeanour. This she has played out by re-inventing herself as a champion of child safety – and by showing rather less cleavage on Instagram. In July 2025, she participated in a roundtable discussion on a proposed legislative initiative to limit the access of minors to blogging platforms. Instasamka has shifted her entire public persona behind vocally supporting a “pro-child” agenda – completely distancing herself from her past in the process.
She has also, it seems, changed her views about artistic censorship. In July this year, she openly criticised fellow rappers Dora and Maybe Baby for allegedly “anti-Russian” behaviour. Their transgression, in Instasamka’s opinion? Performing covers of songs from firebrands like the rapper FACE. Real name Ivan Dryomin, FACE was a vocal critic of the Putin regime. Forced out of the country, he was labelled a “foreign agent” by the Russian government in 2022.
5 Sep 2025 | Israel, News, Opinion, Palestine, United Kingdom
We run this piece the week five spokespeople, who were due to give a press conference about protests against a ban on Palestine Action, were arrested by the Metropolitan Police on suspicion of encouraging support for a proscribed organisation
The right to protest is under unprecedented attack in the UK. I should know. l’ve been campaigning for 58 years and participated in more than 3,000 protests, witnessing first-hand the way protesters’ rights have been progressively eroded.
The recent restrictions are merely an escalation of repressive legislation that has long existed and has often been used to stifle peaceful protest.
In the 1990s, under the ancient “breach of the peace” statutes I was arrested simply for holding placards urging LGBT+ equality. The police said that such a “controversial” demand could cause a violent reaction by members of the public, so I had to be arrested to prevent the possibility of violence. In other words, I was held liable for the potential criminal behaviour of others.
The public order laws against behaviour likely to cause “harassment, alarm and distress” were introduced in 1986, supposedly to combat football hooliganism and violent street disorder. But they have since been used overwhelmingly to suppress peaceful protesters. I was arrested under this law in 1994 for publicly condemning the sexism, homophobia and antisemitism of the Islamist extremist group Hizb-u-Tahrir. The group called for the execution of LGBT people as well as women who have sex outside of marriage. No police action was taken against Hizb-u-Tahrir[1]. But when I cited and criticised what they said, I was arrested for behaviour likely to cause “harassment, alarm or distress.”
In recent years, the criminalisation of peaceful protesters has been further expanded to include mere disruption and nuisance. Disruption? Isn’t that one of the objectives of a protest? To disrupt business as usual. Nuisance? Most people would associate nuisance with a noisy dog or a late train. But a peaceful protest?
The new legislation has given the police a green light to crackdown even more harshly, as my two recent brushes with the law illustrate.
I was arrested at the Palestine solidarity protest in London, on 17 May 2025. The police claimed I had committed a ”racially and religiously aggravated breach of the peace” by marching with my placard: “STOP Israel genocide! STOP Hamas executions! Odai Al-Rubai, aged 22, executed by Hamas! RIP!”
The police claim is nonsense. My placard made no mention of anyone’s race or religion. Detained by the police for nearly six hours, I was finger-printed, DNA-sampled, photographed and denied the right to speak to a solicitor. The police have since admitted I was arrested in “error” but only after adverse publicity and my production of video evidence of the police’s behaviour. It was the 103rd time I have been detained or arrested by the police during my nearly six decades of campaigning – in all cases for peaceful protests.
A week later I was forcibly and unlawfully ejected by police from the Birmingham Pride parade. My crime? The police objected to me holding a placard that read: “West Midlands police refuse to apologise for anti-LGBT+ witch-hunts. SHAME! #ApologiseNow”
When I challenged the police’s bid to remove me from the parade, officers said the Pride organisers told them I was not authorised to be on the march and they had requested the police to remove me. That was a fabrication. I was wearing a march wristband. The Pride CEO approved me to march in the parade and has since confirmed that he never gave the police any instructions to remove me. It looks like police ejected me in revenge for my exposure of their refusal to say “sorry”.
What’s happened to me is small fry compared to government and police sledgehammer tactics against the climate campaigners like Just Stop Oil: sentences of three to five years jail for merely discussing motorway protests. Over two years in prison for climbing on the Dartford Crossing.
The crackdown on protest has culminated in the proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation. This draconian measure is what we expect in Putin’s Russia, not in Britain.
And it only gets worse. Over 500 people were arrested outside parliament on 9 August 2025 for holding placards “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.” They were expressing their opposition to the designation of the organisation as a terrorist group and supporting its efforts to stop what they regard as Israel’s genocide. What kind of country have we become when freedom of expression is a crime?
Breaking the law to non-violently challenge injustice has an honourable tradition, as espoused by Martin Luther King and the US black civil rights movement in the 1960s.
It can be ethically justified in three circumstances: when governments ignore the wishes of the majority, break their election promises or violate human rights. If these principles clash, the protection of human rights should always trump majority opinion and election promises. No government has the right to oppress people or deny freedoms and, if it does, people have a right to resist with non-violent civil disobedience.
And that is what I have done on many occasions. Until the 1990s, there had been a long-standing ban on protests within a mile of parliament, under ancient “sessional orders.” Myself and members of the LGBT+ group OutRage! were determined to challenge this unjustified restriction on the right to protest. We were repeatedly arrested in the 1990s for “unlawfully” standing opposite the House of Commons with placards demanding the repeal of anti-LGBT+ laws. Our ethical law breaking, to assert the right to protest outside parliament, which had imposed these laws, eventually changed the way the law was interpreted and enforced, thereby allowing protests where they were once banned.
Critics say that breaking the law is never justified in a democracy because elections give people the option of changing the government. But Britain is not a fully formed democracy with a fair voting system. No political party has won a majority of the popular vote since 1931.
We’ve had decades of unrepresentative parliaments, and governments ruling with minority public support. Labour won only 34% of the vote in the 2024 general election but bagged 63% of the seats and 100% of the power. That is not democracy. Keir Starmer has no majority mandate for his crackdown on the right to protest.
* For more information about Peter Tatchell’s human rights work: www.PeterTatchellFoundation.org
[Editor’s note: After taking legal advice, Index removed a section of this article pertaining to Palestine Action, because of draconian terror legislation and the lack of a defence of free speech.]
[1] Hizb-u-Tahrir were proscribed in 2024 as a terrorist group
28 May 2025 | Europe and Central Asia, News, Newsletters, Russia
My predecessor Ruth Anderson used to joke that we weren’t working hard enough because we hadn’t been banned in Russia. Perhaps she was onto something. We’re still not banned there, as far as I know. Amnesty International though appears to have met the mark – or rather crossed a Kremlin red line. This week, Russian authorities labelled Amnesty an “undesirable organisation”, accusing it of being a “centre for the preparation of global Russophobic projects”. Any association with the group is now a criminal offence.
This is no empty label. Just ask Galina Timchenko, co-founder and CEO of the independent Russian-language news outlet Meduza. She’s now facing criminal charges for organising the activities of an “undesirable organisation” – namely, Meduza itself, which earned that designation back in January 2023 for its reporting on Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The charges stem from her publishing two videos, one in September 2024 and another in March 2025, which authorities claim were designed to “foment protest sentiment”. If convicted, she could face six years in prison.
But it’s not just human rights organisations and independent journalists in the Kremlin’s crosshairs. This week, a Russian court fined tech giant Apple 10.5 million roubles (approximately $130,900) across four administrative cases. Three related to alleged violations of the country’s anti-LGBTQ+ “propaganda” laws, which were made even more draconian in 2023. The fourth was for allegedly failing to delete content at the request of the Russian authorities.
A journalist from Mediazona, one of Russia’s last remaining independent outlets, covered the court proceedings and offered a glimpse into how such hearings operate. Here’s a telling moment: “Our reporter notes that the judge read the decision at such a rapid pace it was virtually impossible to grasp the precise details of the claims. We then approached the court’s press secretary to request that a summary of the official court record be released for clarity. The response was terse: ‘The hearing is closed.’”
In the past, Apple has received criticism for its compliance with Russian censorship demands, from removing VPNs to restricting certain apps. These are moves it has defended as the price of staying in the country. Now it’s paying a different, more literal price.
As for Index, we remain unbanned – and unbowed. We continue to report on Russia in both our magazine and online, including recently interviewing artist and musician Yaroslav Smolev, and Nadezhda Skochilenko, mother of political prisoner and Index award winner Aleksandra Skochilenko. This isn’t actually about provoking the Kremlin. It’s about doing our job: telling the truth, and shining a light on one of the most authoritarian regimes in the world.
