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President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris greeted three former Russian political prisoners released as part of a massive swap on Thursday.
On Thursday (Aug. 1), three former prisoners in Russia arrived at Joint Air Base Andrews in Maryland before midnight, where they were greeted by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Free Liberty journalist Alsu Kurmasheva were released as part of a historic swap of prisoners between the U.S., Russia, Belarus, and other Western nations. Twenty-four people were freed overall in the largest exchange since the Cold War.
All three hugged and shook hands with President Biden and Vice President Harris in the emotional scene as their respective families came up to tearfully embrace them. The other prisoners freed in the deal included Russian dissidents such as Vladimir Kara-Murza. Russia received eight people, including four spies held in Norway and Slovenia and a convicted assassin serving time in Germany. Biden addressed the reporters on the tarmac, revealing that Slovenia’s inclusion and assistance was crucial to getting the swap done. Harris thanked President Biden for his commitment to making the exchange happen. “This is just an extraordinary testament to the importance of having a president who understands the power of diplomacy,” she said.
The exchange caught the world by surprise and marked another achievement for the Biden administration in its last months in office. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump derided the move in an interview with Fox Business. “As usual, it was a win for Putin or any other country that deals with us,” he began. “But we got somebody back. So, I’m never going to be challenging that. It wouldn’t have happened with us, we would have gotten it back.”
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said to reporters on Thursday that the current sanctions on Russia have not been loosened, and there was no money exchanged in the swap. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby dismissed Trump’s statement in an interview, noting that Whelan and another former prisoner, Trevor Reed, were detained under the Trump administration and freed under Biden. “That’s what you have to do when you have people in harm’s way over there. You’ve got to make these tough decisions. It’s not easy,” he said.
Calls mounted in Russia on Monday to harshly punish those behind the concert hall attack that killed more than 130 people as authorities combed the burned-out ruins of the entertainment complex and an Orthodox priest blessed the site.
Four men, charged with carrying out a terrorist attack, appeared in court Sunday night and showed signs of being severely beaten. Civil liberties groups cited this as sign that Russia’s poor record on human rights under President Vladimir Putin was bound to worsen.
Russia’s Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said the investigation is still ongoing but vowed that “the perpetrators will be punished, they do not deserve mercy.”
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Former President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, urged authorities to “kill them all.”
The attack Friday night on Crocus City Hall on the western outskirts of Moscow left 137 people dead and over 180 injured, proving to be the deadliest in Russia in years. A total of 97 people remained hospitalized, officials said.
As they mowed down concertgoers with gunfire, the attackers set fire to the vast concert hall, and the resulting blaze caused the roof to collapse.
The search operation will continue until at least Tuesday afternoon, officials said. A Russian Orthodox priest conducted a service at the site Monday, blessing a makeshift memorial with incense.
An affiliate of the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack, and U.S. intelligence backed up their claims. French President Emmanuel Macron, speaking on a trip to French Guiana, said France has intelligence pointing to “an IS entity” as responsible for the Moscow attack.
But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused to assign blame, urging reporters Monday to wait for the results of the investigation in Russia. He also refused to comment on reports that the U.S. warned authorities in Moscow on March 7 about a possible terrorist attack, saying any such intelligence is confidential.
The four suspects were identified in the Russian media as Tajik nationals. At least two of the suspects admitted culpability, court officials said, although their conditions raised questions about whether their statements were coerced.
The men were identified as Dalerdzhon Mirzoyev, 32; Saidakrami Rachabalizoda, 30; Shamsidin Fariduni, 25; and Mukhammadsobir Faizov, 19. The charges carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
Russia’s Federal Security Service said seven other suspects have been detained. Three of them appeared in court Monday, with no signs of injuries, and they were placed in pre-trial detention on terrorism charges. The fate of others remained unclear.
Russian media had reported the four were tortured during interrogation. Mirzoyev, Rachabalizoda and Fariduni showed signs of heavy bruising, including swollen faces. Mirzoyev had a plastic bag still hanging over his neck; Rachabalizoda had a heavily bandaged ear. Russian media reported Saturday that one suspect had his ear cut off during interrogation. The Associated Press couldn’t verify the report or videos purporting to show this.
Faizov, wearing a hospital gown, appeared in court in a wheelchair, accompanied by medical personnel, and sat with his eyes closed throughout. He appeared to have multiple cuts.
Peskov refused to comment on the suspects’ treatment.
Medvedev, Russia’s president in 2008-12, had especially harsh comments about them.
“They have been caught. Kudos to all who were chasing them. Should they be killed? They should. And it will happen,” he wrote on his Telegram page. “But it is more important to kill everyone involved. Everyone. Those who paid, those who sympathized, those who helped. Kill them all.”
Margarita Simonyan, head of the state-funded television channel RT, shared photos of the four men’s bruised and swollen faces on X, formerly Twitter.
She said that even the death penalty — currently banned in Russia — would be “too easy” a punishment.
Instead, she said they should face “lifelong hard labor somewhere underground, living there too, without the opportunity to ever see light, on bread and water, with a ban on conversations and with a not very humane escort.”
Russian human rights advocates condemned the violence against the men.
Team Against Torture, a prominent group that advocates against police brutality, said in a statement that the culprits must face stern punishment, but “savagery should not be the answer to savagery.”
It said the value of any testimony obtained by torture was “critically low,” and “if the government allows for torture of terrorism suspects, it may allow unlawful violence toward other citizens, too.”
Net Freedoms, another Russian group that focuses on freedom of speech cases, said Medvedev’s remarks, as well as Putin’s recent call on security services to “punish traitors without a statute of limitation no matter where they are,” made against the backdrop of “demonstrative torture of the detained … effectively authorize extrajudicial killings and give instructions to security forces on how to treat enemies.”
“We’re seeing the possible beginning of the new Great Terror,” Net Freedoms said, referring to mass repressions by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. The group foresees more police brutality against suspects in terrorist-related cases and a spike in violent crimes against migrants.
Abuse of suspects by law enforcement and security services isn’t new, said Sergei Davidis of the Memorial human rights group.
“We know about torture of Ukrainian prisoners of war, we know about mass torture of those charged with terrorism, high treason and other crimes, especially those investigated by the Federal Security Service. Here, it was for the first time made public,” Davidis said.
Parading beaten suspects could reflect a desire by authorities to show a muscular response to try to defuse any criticism of their inability to prevent the attack, he said.
It was a major embarrassment for Putin and came less than a week after he cemented his grip on Russia for another six years in a vote that followed the harshest crackdown on dissent since Soviet times.
Many on Russian social media questioned how authorities and their vast security apparatus that actively surveils, pressures and prosecutes critics failed to prevent the attack despite the U.S. warning.
Citing the treatment of the suspects, Davidis told AP that “we can suppose it was deliberately made public in order to show the severity of response of the state.”
“People are not satisfied with this situation when such a huge number of law enforcement officers didn’t manage to prevent such an attack, and they demonstrate the severe reaction in order to stop these accusations against them,” he said.
The fact that the security forces did not conceal their methods was “a bad sign,” he said.
IS, which fought Russian forces that intervened in the Syrian civil war, has long targeted the country. In a statement posted by the group’s Aamaq news agency, the IS Afghanistan affiliate said it carried out an attack in Krasnogorsk, the suburb of Moscow where the concert hall is located.
In October 2015, a bomb planted by IS downed a Russian passenger plane over Sinai, killing all 224 people aboard, most of them Russian vacationers returning from Egypt.
The group, which operates mainly in Syria and Iraq but also in Afghanistan and Africa, has claimed responsibility for several attacks in Russia’s volatile Caucasus and other regions in past years. It recruited fighters from Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union.
This story was originally published by Associated Press.
Russia observed a national day of mourning on Sunday (March 24) for the victims killed in an attack at a suburban Moscow concert hall. Russia’s Investigative Committee said on Sunday that 137 bodies had been recovered from the Crocus City Hall, where the mass shooting took place on Friday, The New York Times reports. “The […]
Several gunmen burst into a big concert hall on the edge of Moscow on Friday and sprayed visitors with automatic gunfire, injuring an unspecified number of people and starting a massive blaze in an apparent terror attack days after President Vladimir Putin cemented his grip on the country in a highly orchestrated electoral landslide.
There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the raid, the worst terror attack in Russia in two decades that came as the fighting in Ukraine dragged into a third year. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin described the attack as a “huge tragedy.”
Russia’s top domestic security agency, the Federal Security Service, said there are dead and wounded but didn’t give any numbers.
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Russian news reports said that the assailants threw explosives, triggering a massive blaze at the Crocus City Hall on the western edge of Moscow. Video posted on social media showed huge plumes of black smoke rising over the building.
The attack took place as crowds gathered for a concert of Picnic, a famed Russian rock band, at the hall that can accommodate over 6,000 people. Russian news reports said that visitors were being evacuated, but some said that an unspecified number of people could have been trapped by the blaze.
The prosecutor’s office said several men in combat fatigues entered the concert hall and fired at visitors.
Extended rounds of gunfire could be heard on multiple videos posted by Russian media and Telegram channels. One showed two men with rifles moving through the mall. Another one showed a man inside the auditorium, saying the assailants set it on fire, as gunshots rang out incessantly in the background.
More videos showed up to four attackers, armed with assault rifles and wearing caps, who were shooting screaming people at point-blank range.
Andrei Vorobyov, the governor of the Moscow region, said he was heading to the area and set up a task force to deal with the damage. He didn’t immediately offer any further details.
Russian media reports said that riot police units were being sent to the area as people were being evacuated.
Russian authorities said security was tightened at Moscow’s airports and railway stations, while the Moscow mayor cancelled all mass gatherings scheduled for the weekend.
White House National Security Advisor John Kirby said Friday that he couldn’t yet speak about all the details but that “the images are just horrible. And just hard to watch.”
“Our thoughts are going to be with the victims of this terrible, terrible shooting attack,” Kirby said. “There are some moms and dads and brothers and sisters and sons and daughters who haven’t gotten the news yet. This is going to be a tough day.”
The attack followed a statement issued earlier this month by the U.S. Embassy in Moscow that urged the Americans to avoid crowded places in the Russian capital in view of an imminent attack, a warning that was repeated by several other Western embassies.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who extended his grip on Russia for another six years in the March 15-17 presidential vote after a sweeping crackdown on dissent, earlier this week denounced the Western warnings as an attempt to intimidate Russians.
An American musician with the Russian rock group LoviNoch (Catch the Night) has been arrested in Moscow on suspicion of drug trafficking, according to media reports.
Michael Travis Leake, whose Instagram account identifies him as the band’s singer (his last post was on Feb. 3), is suspected of selling mephedrone, a drug with similar effects to cocaine and MDMA, CNN and the Associated Press reported, citing Russian media reports and a statement on Telegram from a Moscow.
Leake faces charges for the distribution or production of drugs, which carry a sentence of up to 20 years in prison. A Moscow court has ordered him to be held for two months in pre-trial detention, the reports say.
CNN reported that Russian media outlets, including Ren TV, a tabloid outlet, published a video of Leake’s arrest at his home and a mug shot from a Russian police station on Thursday (June 8). “I don’t understand why I’m here. I don’t admit guilt, I don’t believe I could have done what I’m accused of because I don’t know what I’m accused of,” Leake reportedly said.
A former paratrooper with the U.S. military who has lived in Moscow since 2010, Leake appeared on a 2014 episode of Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown in Moscow and St. Petersburg after being handpicked by Bourdain to appear on the show. In the episode, he half-joked that the KGB was listening in on their conversation and tailing Bourdain.
The episode’s producer, Darya Tarasova, told CNN that Leake and his friends were vocal critics of Russian state censorship and advocates for free speech in the country.
The U.S. State Department confirmed Leake’s detention in a statement sent to Billboard, with a spokesperson writing, “The Department of State takes seriously its commitment to assist U.S. citizens abroad. It is our standard practice to reach out to the families of U.S. citizens detained overseas as soon as we are provided permission by the individual. We have attempted to reach out to Mr. Leake’s family. We stand ready to provide all appropriate consular assistance to Mr. Leake and his family.”
On Sunday, the State Department told CNN that U.S. embassy officials had attended Leake’s arraignment the day prior. “We will continue to monitor the case closely,” a State Department spokesperson told the outlet.
Leake is the latest American to be detained by Russian officials since the country’s military forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Punitive economic sanctions by the United States and its Western allies have further strained tensions with Russia.
In another drug-related case, WNBA star Brittney Griner was arrested the month of the invasion after vape canisters containing cannabis oil were found in her luggage at a Moscow airport. A Russian court sentenced her to nine years in prison, but she was released in December in exchange for U.S.-imprisoned Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.
And in March, Russian officials detained Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich, accusing him of espionage, which he denies. On May 23, a Russian court extended his arrest by three months.
LONDON — Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 led to a rapid exodus of global music companies from Russia. All three major labels say they ceased operations there. So did touring giant Live Nation and streaming platforms Spotify, TikTok, Deezer and Amazon Music. Paris-headquartered Believe, however, publicly pursued a different path, and a year later is still operating in Russia — releasing, distributing and promoting new music by local artists and labels on Russian streaming platforms Yandex. Plus, VK Music and Zvuk.
Executives at rival music companies have privately expressed outrage, accusing Believe of exploiting the sudden breakup of Russia’s music market — the 13th largest in 2021, generating $328 million in revenue that year, according to IFPI — to gain market share in the absence of Western competitors.
Denis Ladegaillerie, Believe’s founder and CEO, denies that charge and says the major labels and platforms are being hypocritical for criticizing how the French company is operating in Russia. Believe’s ongoing presence in the country “is really not an economic decision,” he tells Billboard in a rare interview addressing the issue. “We are not looking at building or growing or extracting value [in Russia].”
Following the start of hostilities, Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group said they stopped distributing and promoting new releases in Russia. If new titles are being made available on local streaming services, the majors say, it’s through piracy.
The Believe CEO is skeptical about those assertions and defends his company’s continued presence in the isolated nation. “What I see is that all global artists are still available on all local platforms [in Russia],” Ladegaillerie says, noting that YouTube and Apple Music are also still active in the market, albeit in a reduced capacity. “So, my question is: ‘You’ve pulled out of Russia? Really?’”
After Billboard discovered in December that Russian streaming service VK was allowing users to upload albums from major label artists like Taylor Swift (UMG’s Republic Records) and Red Hot Chili Peppers (Warner Music), all three major labels declined to comment; labels body IFPI did not condemn the apparent copyright violations, nor confirm if they or its label members had issued takedown orders to VK.
Ladegaillerie says Believe, for its part, has “very strictly” abided by all international sanctions placed against Russia since the start of the war — “both in law and spirit” — and has halted all new investments in the now-isolated country. “Our No. 1 priority, both in Russia and Ukraine, has been to protect our teams locally and support our artists,” he says.
Despite those claims, Believe’s revenue from Russia, where it retains just over 40 employees, has been growing. Combined revenue from Russia and Ukraine rose 9.9% to 57 million euros ($62.5 million) in 2022, according to the company’s year-end financial figures. (That was 7.5% of Believe’s overall revenue.)
While the economic sanctions against Russia were meant to starve the country of funds and further isolate it from the world financial system, they have been limited in scope and hundreds of Western companies continue to operate in the country. Global music companies have not completely extracted themselves from the country, either. Universal Music and Warner Music — which had the largest presence in Russia among the majors, with almost 100 employees — continue to pay their staff and maintain offices there, although they say those offices have been effectively closed since the war started.
In September, Sony Music announced it had decided “to exit the Russian marketplace completely” and was transferring its Sony Music entity there to a fully independent local company that would only represent locally signed artists. “As the war continues to have a devastating humanitarian impact in Ukraine, and sanctions on Russia continue to increase, we can no longer maintain a presence in Russia, effective immediately,” Sony Music said in a statement at the time.
YouTube continues to operate in Russia in compliance with U.S. sanctions but has suspended ads and monetization features (Russian creators can still make money from ads and other monetization products shown to users outside of the country). The Russian subsidiary of YouTube parent company Google filed for bankruptcy last year after authorities seized its bank account, making it impossible to pay employees, suppliers and vendors, a YouTube spokesperson tells Billboard.
Apple Music is still available in Russia, although there are fewer subscription payment options, as MasterCard and Visa cards issued by Russian banks can no longer be used to pay for subscriptions. Music from the major labels that left Russia is not available. (An Apple Music spokesperson did not reply to a request for comment.)
The French government of President Emmanuel Macron, for its part, has supported Believe’s decision to “maintain links” with Russia, Ladegaillerie says. That rings true for other French companies, which established deep ties with Russia in the wake of the Cold War. In March, French retailer Auchan said it planned to open a new store in Russia, doubling down on its brick-and-mortar presence in the market. And auto maker Renault, which is 15%-owned by the French state, has been scrambling to restart its assembly lines in Russia, where it owns the country’s biggest car maker, The Wall Street Journal reported.
In fact, French companies are among Russia’s biggest foreign employers, providing more than 150,000 jobs across a range of sectors that include energy, food products and wholesaling, according to figures from the French Economy Ministry.
The situation “is not black and white, it’s grey,” Ladegaillerie says. He identifies Believe’s humanitarian support for Ukraine — which includes donations and regularly publishing a playlist of Ukrainian artists — as part of the “difficult” balance his company is trying to maintain in Eastern Europe. “We realized that different countries have different perspectives on the situation but that’s really the line that we are trying to navigate.”
Additional Reporting By Vladimir Kozlov
Russian authorities have put a member of the Pussy Riot punk group on a most wanted list for criminal suspects as the Kremlin works to stifle political dissent.
Russian news outlet Mediazona discovered an entry for Nadya Tolokonnikova in the Russian Interior Ministry’s database of wanted individuals on Wednesday (March 29). The entry, also reviewed by The Associated Press, said Tolokonnikova faces criminal charges, but it didn’t specify what the charges are.
Tolokonnikova became widely known for taking part in a 2012 Pussy Riot protest inside Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral. She spent nearly two years in prison.
Earlier this month Russia’s top human rights lawyer, Pavel Chikov, said a criminal case had been launched against Tolokonnikova on the charge of offending religious believers’ feelings, which became a criminal offense in Russia after the 2012 Pussy Riot protest.
Tolokonnikova has left Russia. In 2021, the Russian government designated her as a “foreign agent,” a label that brings additional government scrutiny and carries pejorative connotations that can discredit the recipients.
Russian authorities have applied the designation to independent media outlets and opposition activists.
It was announced last week that Pussy Riot will receive the 2023 Woody Guthrie Prize, with Tolokonnikova telling Billboard after the announcement: “It feels fitting to be awarded in the spirit of Woody, I think he would love Pussy Riot’s anti-fascist message.”
The Eastern European country of Belarus has adopted a law that essentially legalizes piracy of music and other forms of copyrighted entertainment, which could make it a hotbed for piracy well beyond its borders.
Under the law, which President Alexander Lukashenko approved in early January, copyrighted music, films and other audiovisual content originating from “unfriendly countries” can be used in Belarus without permission from rights holders.
The law doesn’t provide a list of “unfriendly countries.” But based on the Belarusian government’s previous statements, the legislation primarily targets Western nations, which slapped sanctions on Belarus following mass repressions of people for protesting the rigged presidential vote in 2020 and, more recently, because of Belarus’ support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Belarus has never been a major music market — it does not show up in the IFPI’s ranking of the 62 biggest markets — and the major global labels had traditionally run operations there from their Russian offices. Since the labels pulled out of Russia after the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, they have also cut ties with Belarus. The country, which sits between Russia to the east and Ukraine to the south, backed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine invasion last year by allowing Russia to launch part of its attack from Belarusian territory.
Despite its small stature in the music industry, analysts say that under the government’s piracy-permitting law Belarus could play an outsized role in spurring more global piracy.
“As Belarus is a very small music market — a rounding error in the global market — there will be little direct impact in terms of music revenues for western rights holders,” says Mark Mulligan, music analyst at MIDiA Research.
“What might be impactful though is whether piracy networks start to operate from Belarus, distributing globally but operating under the protection of Belarussian law.”
The music industry is already dealing with a spate of piracy networks based in Russia and surrounding countries that are distributing pirated content to other markets, sometimes on other continents. Among the best-known operations are the stream-ripping websites FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com, run by Tofig Kurbanov, who reportedly lives in southern Russia.
More than two dozen record labels and the RIAA have pursued Kurbanov in the U.S. for copyright damages. Last February, a U.S. district judge in Alexandria, Va., approved an $82.9 million judgement against the Russian for circumventing YouTube’s anti-piracy measures and infringing copyrights of audio recordings. The court found that Kurbanov’s operation drew more than 300 million users from around the world to his sites in a single year. (Kurbanov says he plans to appeal.)
And in Brazil, Paulo Rosa, IFPI affiliate Pro Música’s president, told Billboard in 2021 that most of the fake streams being peddled to consumers in the South American country originate from hacker operations in Russia.
The Belarusian piracy law could nevertheless set an example for neighboring Russia, which for months has been considering a similar move to legalize copyrighted content from certain Western countries. Since the early 2000s, Russia has often followed the example of Belarus in strengthening authoritarian rule.
Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko speaks during a press conference on December 19, 2022.
Contributor/GI
Before the war with Ukraine, Russia had the 13th-largest music market in 2020 with revenues of $328 million, a 58% bump from 2019; it was the fastest-growing market in the world in 2019 and 2020, according to the IFPI.
While Russia’s relations with the West are at their lowest point since Cold War, and many Western companies have left the country, the legalization of piracy would likely further isolate Russia — and could “set back the Russian music industry by decades,” one person at a global music company tells Billboard.
In recent years, Russia had made a substantial effort to shed its reputation as a place where piracy ran rampant. VK, the Russian analog of Facebook, which for years allowed users to share unlicensed music tracks on the platform, eventually cleaned up its act and signed license agreements with global majors a few years ago.
Now that the majors have left Russia, dozens of pirated albums have already been reappearing on VK, including recent releases from Taylor Swift (Midnights, on Universal Music Group’s Republic Records) and Red Hot Chili Peppers (Return of the Dream Canteen, on Warner Music Group’s Warner Records).
The legalization of piracy would certainly make it harder for Western streaming services to start operating in Russia again, says Mulligan. While Russia is still “earlier in its streaming development,” he says, “longer term it could become a significant market and at that stage Western rightsholders would want to ensure that their music is being paid for when it is being consumed at scale.”
New laws legalizing piracy would fly in the face of treaty commitments made by both Belarus and Russia. Both countries are signatories to the Berne Convention and other World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)-administered treaties.
“Suspending IP protection as Belarus is presently considering would violate its obligations under these WIPO treaties and would seriously dampen Belarus’ opportunities to become integrated into the global trade community and to secure [Most Favored Nation] status, or to further integrate with the [European Union], thus minimizing its economic opportunities in the long term,” says Neil Turkewitz, president of Turkewitz Consulting Group.
Also, “any actions legalizing piracy would destroy any chance of investment in local creative industries and would hurt local artists and their fans the most,” the IFPI tells Billboard in a statement. “Such actions would be in clear breach of international copyright law and trade agreements.”
After years of trying to clean up its act and shed its reputation as a major source of pirated music, Russian streaming service VK is allowing users to upload albums released on major record labels that exited Russia after the invasion of Ukraine.
A search by Billboard on Dec. 7 found that dozens of albums from major labels were were available to all VK users and could be found using the service’s search tool. They included Taylor Swift‘s Midnights, released by Universal Music Group’s Republic Records, and Red Hot Chili Pepper‘s Return of the Dream Canteen, a Warner Records Music release.
VK did not reply to Billboard‘s request for comment.
Global labels body IFPI in London did not immediately condemn the apparent copyright violations, nor confirm if they or its label members had issued takedown orders to VK in recent days. “We’re continuously monitoring the situation in Russia with regard to unauthorized services and will take appropriate action as necessary,” an IFPI spokesperson said.
Sony, Warner and Universal all declined to comment. “It’s disappointing and wrong but comes as no surprise considering [Russia’s] current lack of respect for rights or the rule of law,” one senior industry executive told Billboard.
Courtesy Photo
Just some of the pirated Taylor Swift music featured on VK.
Courtesy Photo
Launched as VKontakte in 2007 in St. Petersburg, VK offers music and other features of a social media platform. As of last month, it was the sixth most-popular web site in Russia, according Similarweb, a website tracking company. It is the second most-popular platform offering music in Russia after Yandex.Music.
In the first quarter, VK had 73.4 million monthly average users and a global audience of 100.4 million. The platform offers both an ad-sponsored model and a subscription service with 3.5 million subscribers, according to the most-recent data available. (Before pulling out, Spotify reportedly had 600,000 paid subscribers in Russia.)
VK’s history of piracy is well noted. When VK emerged as Russia’s response to Facebook, it had a feature that Facebook didn’t — a tool allowing users to upload music tracks that immediately became available to all other users.
That feature was, arguably, one of the reasons why VK quickly became popular with younger users. However, it also made the social network an archenemy of international major labels who accused it of facilitating online piracy.
A range of lawsuits were brought against VK, but the company stood its ground, claiming it had no technical capability to control user-generated content but was willing to remove any copyrighted content at rights holders’ request. The problem was that if a pirated music track was removed, another copy of it would be almost immediately added by another user.
For a while, courts accepted VK’s argument about its inability to control user-generated content, but an array of lawsuits eventually forced VK to sign licensing deals with the majors and the streaming platform got rid of user-generated pirated music a few years ago.
Then in March, in support of Western sanctions to penalize Russia for Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Sony, Warner and Universal said they were suspending operations in Russia, and their new releases were no longer available on VK. That same month, Amazon, Deezer, Spotify and TikTok either closed their Russian offices or stopped trading in what was previously the 13th largest music market. (YouTube, for its part, suspended all monetization programs for users in Russia in March.) Among major global music providers, only Believe, the French music distributor, has continued to operate in Russia, saying in September that it was doing so “to support its artists, labels and protect its people’s safety as well as ensure access to music production and distribution.”
The pullout by the global music industry slowed the legal development of a market that Spotify, in particular, had targeted as a key country in its expansion into Eastern and Central Europe. Russia was the fastest-growing market among the global top 20 both in 2019 and 2020, when it produced $328 million in recorded-music revenue, a 58% increase over 2020, according to IFPI.
Some Russian officials have called for a regulation that would permit the use of music and movies whose rights holders have left Russia. The most popular proposal was that all royalties owed to foreign rights holders who left Russia would be held in a dedicated account in Russian rubles and then distributed at some point in the future. Nothing concrete has been done in that area so far, but the Russian government has authorized imports of products by companies which left Russia. They cannot be technically sold in Russia, but they are imported via third countries.
Under current Russian law, the use of music or movies without permission from rights holders remains illegal.
Additional Reporting By Richard Smirke
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