Russia: Pro-Putin rapper wears 'only sock' in stars' semi-naked party, sparks wartime backlash

A rapper who attended a celebrity party with only a sock to hide his modesty has been jailed for 15 days, sponsors of some of Russia's best-known entertainers have torn up their contracts, and President Vladimir Putin is reported to be unamused. An "almost naked" party at a Moscow nightclub held at a time when Russia is engaged in a war with Ukraine and the authorities are pushing an increasingly conservative social agenda, has provoked an unusually swift and powerful backlash. Her name has since disappeared as one of the public faces of major Russian mobile phone operator MTS, the tax authorities have opened an investigation that carries a potential five-year jail term, and a Moscow court has accepted a lawsuit from a group of individuals demanding she pay out 1 billion roubles for "moral suffering." Outrage "To hold such events at a time when our guys are dying in the special military operation and many children are losing their fathers is cynical," said Yekaterina Mizulina, director of Russia's League for a Safe Internet, a body founded with the authorities support. The scandal comes at a time when Putin, who is expected to comfortably win another six-year term at a March election, has doubled down on social conservatism, urging families to have eight or more children, and after Russia's Supreme Court ruled that LGBT activists should be designated as "extremists."