Russia: Miss Crimea sentenced for a Ukrainian patriotic song


A Russian court has fined the winner of a beauty pageant for married women in Crimea for posting a video of her performing a Ukrainian patriotic song, police in the annexed peninsula said on Tuesday.

In the video released in September on social networks, two young women, including Miss Crimea 2022, Olga Valeeva, 34, sing a capella the song “Chervona Kalina», considered by the Russian authorities as the anthem of Ukrainian nationalists.

Since deleted, the video has however been the subject of an investigation. The “interior ministry” of the Crimea announced Tuesday, October 4 to have arrested “two young women performing the anthem of an extremist organization in a video“.

He posted a video where two young women, their faces blurred, apologize. “I want to sincerely apologize for singing the song Chervona Kalina whose message I was completely unaware ofsays one, who looks like Olga Valeeva.

We sang this song without putting symbolic connotations in it“, also assured on her Instagram page this model, dancer and blogger, originally from Poltava, in eastern Ukraine.

According to the ministry, the two young women, born in 1987 and 1989, were found guilty of having discredited the Russian army and sentenced — one to ten days in prison and the other to a fine of 40,000 rubles ( 680 euro).

On September 10, another video shot at a wedding party at a restaurant in Bakhchisarai in southern Crimea, where guests sang “Chervona Kalina», earned fines and penalties ranging from 5 to 15 days in prison to its organizers and participants.

The restaurant owner also recorded a video where he apologized and showed his support for the Russian offensive in Ukraine, which has been underway since the end of February. These incidents have provoked the ire of Crimean Governor Sergei Aksionov, who has promised to open criminal investigations against those who sing Ukrainian songs or chant pro-Ukrainian slogans.

Chervona Kalina’s chorus, sung by musician Andriy Khlyvnyuk of the Ukrainian band Boombox shortly after the start of the Russian invasion, was used in April by the band Pink Floyd in the single “Hey, Hey, Rise-Up! whose video went around the world, in support of Ukraine.

Crimea was annexed in March 2014 by Russia, which also attached four other Ukrainian regions last week which it controls at least partially after referendums denounced by kyiv and the West.

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