Strategic Silence and Ambiguity: Popular Rappers in Russia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine After 2022

Björn Boman

Europe-Asia Studies, 2025, vol. 77, issue 8, 1300-1312

Abstract: In the 2010s, Russian rap music became widely accepted and commercially successful in the Russian Federation and across post-Soviet Eurasia. The current article focuses on how successful rappers from Russia (Miyagi and Endspiel), Kazakhstan (Skryptonite) and Ukraine (T-fest) have mostly taken a strategically silent and apolitical approach to the large-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Given the increasingly repressive conditions in Russia in the 2010s, an apolitical stance was common for Russian pop artists. Since the 2022 war, such a stance may have an additional strategic impetus: to avoid alienating fans in both the domestic and foreign markets.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/09668136.2025.2551147

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