Reading the room

Russian pop star Instasamka denounces fellow performers in apparent bid to prove patriotic credentials

Russia’s celebrities are bickering again. Earlier this week, blogger and singer Instasamka (Daria Zoteeva) posted politically charged allegations against two other performers, Dora (Daria Shikhanova) and Maybe Baby (Victoria Lysyuk). Specifically, she accused Dora of covering music by the Ukrainian rock band Valentin Strykalo and the emigre rapper Face, despite these artists’ “involvement in the oppression of our country,” as she put it. Instasamka claimed that Maybe Baby’s music promotes drug use and other propaganda that Russia recognizes as extremist movements, likely alluding to Lysyuk’s bisexuality. She also claimed that security at Maybe Baby’s concerts had previously ejected people for chanting “Russia!” Meduza reviews the latest drama from one of Russia’s most notorious online personalities.

In her Telegram post, Instasamka complained about Dora and Maybe Baby’s continued commercial success, arguing that they were profiting off Russia’s “destruction”:

And today they perform for Russian people, for our youth, making albums with destructive content. Under the guise of freedom, they push and have always pushed propaganda. Some opposition you are! You don’t stand for anything. These people get on Channel One without any problem and tour 10+ cities, drawing crowds of 1,000+. [...] And now a question for you, girls: What are you doing here?

Instasamka’s claims come years after a previous spat with Maybe Baby, when the latter publicly mocked Zoteeva in a “diss track” in 2022. Last month, Instasamka announced that she would finally release a “retaliatory diss,” declaring that “playtime” is over. Following the propaganda allegations, Maybe Baby joked that Instasamka apparently spent the last three years brainstorming how to denounce her.

Instasamka’s other target, the performer Dora, pointed out that the covers Zoteeva flagged were released back in 2017, when Shikhanova was still in school and using a different pseudonym. None of those tracks was ever included on a Dora album, she clarified. “Be sure to verify information before spreading it, and don’t trust questionable characters who pursue selfish goals,” Shikhanova said.

Actor Maxim Vitorgan also weighed in, expressing outrage at the public denunciation. “Where does this nasty snitching shit come from in young people?” Vitorgan asked. His ex-wife, journalist Ksenia Sobchak, also commented on the scandal, recalling that Instasamka herself was the target of a denunciation campaign in 2023, when the Safe Internet League lobbied for the cancellation of her concerts to halt what the group claimed was drug propaganda and “depraved acts against children.” After the league’s leader, Ekaterina Mizulina, held a “working meeting” with Instasamka, the artist promised to take down all songs “containing dangerous information.”

From the track “Pimp Lady”

Buying myself a yacht, buying myself a chain / Was dealing crack then, running a brothel now.

From “Holy Bible”

Build me a temple / I'll cleanse your karma / Look at the screen / Save spam, self hard / I'll sell it all, sell it all / City full of scam

From “Jail”

Five minutes until the cops roll up / Get out the ammo, time to hold it down.

From “Russian World”

Russian world — it’s a tough sport / No comfort here / We’re all half-dead / Russian world — it’s a tough sport / Make money like Tom Ford / Make money like Tom Ford / Until you're dead.

“I agree with you, my old tracks from 2019–2020 were trash, and I myself wasn’t quite right back then,” Instasamka responded. However, she claims that she has turned over a new leaf, focusing her newer music on promoting values such as “love, success, husband and wife, motivation, self-confidence, love for your body, and striving to live in prosperity.” Instasamka then declared, “Today, when I have meaning in life, a loved one beside me, a long relationship in which we plan to have children, I understand that what these two bitches are doing is fucked up.”

Now 25 years old, Daria Zoteeva is one of Russia’s most scandalous bloggers and rap performers. She gained popularity on Instagram and later launched a singing career. On and off the stage, Instasamka has engaged in deliberately provocative behavior, feuding with a former assistant, insulting makeup artists, inventing stories of a home robbery and an accident that supposedly involved her boyfriend. In her songs, Zoteeva emphasizes her love of money, epitomized in her biggest hit, For Money Yes.

The first campaign against Instasamka preceded the spike in patriotic culture that followed Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In 2021, the Ivan Chai Center for Protecting Traditional Family Values complained to public prosecutors in the Sverdlovsk region about Zoteeva’s song Lipsi Ha, but the investigation was dropped. In 2023, Instasamka’s brush with the Safe Internet League led to the cancellation of some concerts. Zoteeva resumed touring after meeting with Ekaterina Mizulina, but she nevertheless found herself among several “banned artists” on a list leaked to the news media in the fall of 2024.

“You could look at this new round of going after her colleagues as just more shameless theatrics — [Instasamka’s] usual ‘look what I can get away with’ antics. But this move aligns perfectly with where things are heading between artists and the state,” argued Dozhd journalist Yulia Taratuta. In a news broadcast on July 3, she said her sources doubt that Zoteeva was acting on orders from the authorities when she attacked Shikhanova and Lysyuk. “They’re doing the snitching themselves now, bit by bit,” said Taratuta. “They’re reading the room now.”