Banned in Russia after anthem for stray animals goes viral
By Maria Jevstafjeva
Russia’s internet censor has asked streaming services to restrict access to an artist called Ap$ent after one of his songs went viral across Eastern Europe.
TikTok users from countries like Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan have in recent months adopted his 2022 song Can I come with you? as a backing track for clips of stray animal rescues.
The censor, Roskomnadzor, imposed the ban on his music, supposedly to prevent “destabilisation of Russian society”.
Ap$ent, who comes from Belarus and his real name is Arseniy Kisliak, thinks he’s probably been targeted because of an earlier song he wrote with an anti-war theme.
But it was Can I come with you? that attracted millions of listens on YouTube and Spotify because of the TikTok trend.
The song was never meant to be about stray animals. Ap$ent wrote it when he was fleeing Belarus with his wife Maryia.
They decided to leave after she was sentenced to a year in an open penal facility for insulting Belarus’s long-time leader Alexander Lukashenko. She had used a derogatory word on social media and Belarusian authorities assumed it was aimed at him.
Although the song was about the couple’s experience of leaving, Ap$ent says that animals did partly inspire the lyrics.
