Moscow puts popular Ukrainian singer on wanted list, accusing her of spreading false information about Russian military

Russia has placed a Ukrainian singer who won the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest on its wanted list, state news agencies reported Monday.

The reports said an Interior Ministry database listed singer Susana Jamaladinova as wanted for violating a criminal law.

Independent news site Mediazona, which covers opposition and human rights issues, said Jamaladinova was charged with a law passed last year to prohibit the spread of so-called false information about the Russian military and the ongoing fighting in Ukraine.

Jamaladinova, who performs under the stage name Jamala, is of Crimean Tatar descent. Jamala, who listed on the Kennedy Center Honors in December won the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest with the song “1944,” a title that refers to the year the Soviet Union deported the Crimean Tatars en masse.

Her winning performance came almost exactly two years after Russia annexed Crimea as political turmoil gripped Ukraine. Most other countries consider the annexation illegitimate.

Russia objected to “1944” being allowed in the contest, saying it violated rules against political speech at Eurovision. But the song made no specific criticism of Russia or the Soviet Union, although it did carry such implications, opening with the lyrics “When strangers come, they come to your house, they kill you all and say ‘We’re not guilty’.” “

Earlier this year Jamaladinova spoke to the BBC about the release of her new folk album, Qirim, saying it was her attempt “to give a strong voice to my homeland, to Crimea.”

“The centuries of the Russian Empire, then the Soviet Union, now Russia – they did a lot of propaganda to shut us up. Then they told the whole world that we didn’t exist. But we know the truth. I know the truth. And so that’s why it’s too It’s really important to me to show that truth through the stories behind each of the songs on this album,” she told the BBC.

Just last week a Russian court sentenced the artist and musician Sasha Skochilenko to seven years in prison for exchanging supermarket price tags with anti-war messages.

Skochilenko was arrested in his native St. Petersburg in April 2022 and charged with spreading false information about the military after replacing price tags with ones condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.