Russian celebrities caught 'nearly naked' are now dressing to appease

The Russian pop star cowered like the black kitten he was cuddling in Russian-occupied Ukraine licked the crook of his neck for about the 15th time.

Just weeks earlier, musician Dima Bilan had been in Moscow, where he mingled with celebrities in a see-through shirt at an “almost naked” theme party that caused a stir in Russia and threatened to end his career.

Now Mr. Bilan, who once won the Eurovision Song Contest, was on an image-rehabilitation tour in a winter war zone — the newly prescribed path for celebrities left out in the cold in wartime Russia and looking to return to the Kremlin's embrace.

He petted dogs and petted kittens in animal shelters outside Donetsk. He handed out hugs to recovering children at a medical trauma center. He delivered new air conditioning units to a facility in need.

“Just from a human perspective, I'm concerned,” he said in a video of the trip.

The public backlash has continued since a leading Russian TV personality hosted entertainment stars, including Mr. Bilan, at a hedonistic party in late December. Crusaders from pre-war culture denounced celebrities for engaging in erotic high jinks in skimpy garb at a trendy Moscow club while Russian troops died on the front lines.

Participants in the party have faced legal consequences ranging from lawsuits to draft injunctions. Some stars lost endorsement deals or had performances canceled. People involved in the event have made efforts to restore their reputations.

The situation has given President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and his allies an unexpected opportunity to step up their crusade for “traditional values” ahead of the country's presidential election in March — while portraying the “nearly naked” party as a example of moral values. the bankruptcy that the Russian leader attributes to the West.

Mr. Putin obliquely mentioned the party for the first time in comments last week, presenting it as the kind of behavior Russia will no longer tolerate in wartime, as troops return from the front with what he called new values ​​and priorities.

“You won't be jumping around at a party without pants,” he said.

The anger over the December 21 holiday has highlighted how the war is changing the rules of the game for a Russian elite that has long remained isolated from the hardships evident in the rest of the country. New boundaries of acceptable behavior go far beyond abstaining from anti-war dissidents in an increasingly militarized and closed society.

“This significantly changes the thinking and public behavior of virtually the entire Russian elite,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. “Because now it is clear that you have to behave very carefully. Now everything must correlate with military logic.”

Mr. Putin, Ms. Stanovaya suggested, is afraid of “what kind of feelings these parties will arouse in those who are fighting, those who are losing their relatives and loved ones,” adding: “He is answering to them.”

Officials and activists linked to the Kremlin have stoked opposition to the party just as Russian forces carried out one of the biggest airstrikes of the war against neighboring Ukraine, where thousands of civilians have been killed by Moscow's attacks.

The contrast between the uproar in Russia over the vulgar celebrity party and the silence over the deadly attacks on Ukraine highlighted the warped information space that has emerged in Russia in the nearly two years since Moscow's full-scale invasion.

The scandal over the party intensified after Mr. Putin was shown footage of the event and expressed his personal disgust, effectively giving the go-ahead against the celebrities, according to reports from Russian news media and Bloomberg News.

In particular, Mr Putin was disturbed by a video from the party showing a little-known Russian musician, Nikolai Vasiliev, whose stage name is Vacio, wearing nothing but a sock on his genitals and surrounded by attendees engaged in a sexual simulated action. This was reported by the independent Russian news channel Agentstvo.

Russian officials, pro-war bloggers, conservative activists and members of the Russian Orthodox Church sprang into action, delivering a public whipping to the party's celebrity attendees that extended to legal action and pulled stars from state television.

Mr Vasilyev, 25, was held for 15 days on charges of promoting LGBTQ propaganda and was later rearrested for another 10 days after authorities said he committed hooliganism after his release.

He apologized and subsequently released a public statement saying, “I am a heterosexual man, I follow the laws of the Russian Federation and I am only interested in women.” He said he had “never been a supporter of the LGBT community,” which Russia's Supreme Court last year called an “extremist” international movement.

Mr. Vasilyev, whose party outfit mimicked a style pioneered by the Red Hot Chili Peppers in the 1980s, said in a video released on his Telegram channel last Tuesday that he had received a summons at the military draft office.

“Everything will be fine,” he said. “I'm coming to my senses.”

Russian authorities have also opened a tax investigation into the party's host, television host Nastya Ivleyeva, and fined her for violating public order. Two Moscow courts have dismissed lawsuits worth millions of dollars against her by Russian citizens claiming “moral damages,” although another lawsuit has been filed outside St. Petersburg.

Ms Ivleyeva showed off diamond and emerald body jewelry in images of the party that circulated online, asking: “Have you ever seen 23 million rubles ($261,000) on a butt?”

Ms. Ivleyeva released a number of apology videos, noting that she would not take any public action to rehabilitate herself because nothing would seem sincere — “and honestly in this situation I don't even know what I could do.”

Ms. Ivleyeva, like other celebrities, made an anti-war post on social media after the Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, but has since kept relatively quiet about the war.

Mikhail Danilov, the owner of Mutabor, the club where the party was held, tried to atone for the event by donating fragments of a relic of St. Nicholas, a saint venerated by Orthodox Christians in Russia, to a church in Moscow donate.

In footage released online, he confessed to the church's priest his opposition to “devilish practices” and the “dark arts” before handing over the fragments, along with an accompanying certificate of authenticity that he said he received in November obtained from the Vatican. Next reports have suggested that both the fragments and the documentation may have been fake.

A Moscow court later closed Mutabor for 90 days, citing violations of “sanitary and epidemiological” rules.

For his part, Mr. Bilan emphasized that he only attended the party briefly and wore “a turtleneck, an oversized raincoat, pants and boots,” without mentioning that the turtleneck was made of translucent black mesh. He said he “understood the outrage of our people, especially those defending us at the front.”

He rejected accusations of his indifference to the situation in Russia, noting that on December 5, weeks before the celebration, he gave a concert for families of Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine.

Yet there he was in the animal shelter in Donetsk, where he adopted the black kitten; his own cat had died three months earlier.

After a 16-hour drive back to Moscow, Mr. Bilan set up his new cat's crate, opened the door and began coaxing the animal onto a carpet in his home.

“Do not be afraid. Everything is fine,” the pop star said. “You have a new, different life.”

Alina Lobzina reporting contributed.