‘I thought, what could they do to me?’ Russian street singer Diana Loginova, jailed for performing anti-war songs, gives first major interview in exile

‘I thought, what could they do to me?’ Russian street singer Diana Loginova, jailed for performing anti-war songs, gives first major interview in exile

In 2025, three St. Petersburg street musicians did something seemingly impossible in wartime Russia: they repeatedly drew crowds of dozens of people to sing openly anti-war songs in public. The feat didn’t come without a price. In mid-October, Diana Loginova, Aleksandr Orlov, and Vladislav Leontyev were arrested. Over the following weeks, they were kept in custody through a series of consecutive misdemeanor sentences — an “arrest carousel” that …