Russian Radio and Music of the First Cut the Mention of Instagram From the Tr...

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📺❌ Russian Radio and Music of the First cut the mention of Instagram from an Artik & Asti track. The social network is banned, but not for everyone: Russia’s Foreign Ministry continues to use its logo

TV channel Music of the First (owned by Tricolor) and Russian Radio (part of the Russian Media Group holding company owned by oligarch Vladimir Kiselev) censored the video and track "Girl, Dance" by the Ukrainian pop group Artik & Asti, MO noticed.

◾️Both verses of the song were censored: "His number in block, on Instagram — in ban." The music media handled it differently: Music of the First completely removed the banned name, while Russian Radio partially cut it out.

🎶"Girl, Dance" is one of Artik & Asti’s best-known songs; the video on YouTube has more than 250 million views. After the start of the full-scale war, duet member Artyom Umrikhin left Russia and moved to Dubai. The project’s former lead singer Anna Dzyuba lives in Russia; in October 2023 she received Russian citizenship.

◾️In March 2022, Moscow’s Tverskoy District Court recognized the activities of Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, as extremist. After that, Roskomnadzor said that Russian media must not display the logos of these social networks and are required to label Meta as an organization banned in Russia.

◾️People in Russia are fined and jailed for displaying Facebook and Instagram logos. In February, Moscow’s Meshchansky District Court arrested Denis Soldatov, head of Gulag-info, for 15 days over the Instagram logo on the project’s website. In Dagestan, courts fined 22 entrepreneurs who used the "extremist" icon to advertise their businesses. And in Nizhnevartovsk, the director of the art studio Alisa Ceramica was fined 2,000 rubles over the Instagram logo on the studio’s website.

◾️This censorship rule does not apply to everyone. The Russian Foreign Ministry’s website still contains the Instagram and Facebook logos, which could be regarded as propaganda of extremism. But the Interior Ministry does not think so. In response to an inquiry from MO, R.R. Akhmedzhanov, deputy head of the Interior Ministry’s Center for Countering Extremism, said that "During the inspection conducted, no violations of the legislation of the Russian Federation were identified."

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