A Russian musician has been dragged out of a St. Petersburg airport, jailed, and given a military summons—all because he took to the stage wearing nothing but a sock on his penis over the weekend.
Maxim Tesli, the frontman for the band The Puppies, was catching a flight to Yekaterinburg late Monday, from where he planned to fly to Kazakhstan, according to local reports. But cops swooped in at Pulkovo Airport and detained him before he could flee.
His arrest came just a day after he stripped down during a show at a St. Petersburg club and belted out a song wearing only a sock to cover his penis, which was ultimately exposed after the sock fell off. Pro-Kremlin activists suddenly cried foul over the performance, claiming Tesli had somehow “propagandized” the LGBT lifestyle by revealing his genitals.
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“It happened. I regret it. It happened accidentally. I didn’t think the sock would slip off,” he told reporters.
A court ordered Tesli’s arrest for 10 days on charges of petty hooliganism, but some lawmakers are demanding he face a harsher punishment. Vitaly Milonov, the State Duma deputy who spearheaded the country’s notorious anti-gay propaganda law, told a Moscow radio station that Tesli will likely now be forced “to perform like this in a penal colony.” The local news outlet Fontanka reports that investigators tasked with countering “extremism” are also now looking into Tesli’s performance.
But none of that may matter, as the 37-year-old singer was hit with a military summons following his arrest—meaning he may just be tossed onto the battlefield in Ukraine. The Kremlin-friendly news outlet Mash reports that the summons is intended to register Tesli for military service and clarify certain information, though many other Russian troops have reported being swept up into the war by precisely that routine request.
The singer is just the latest figure in Russia’s entertainment industry to find himself ensnared in a bizarre crackdown. Celebrities who attended a private party last month dubbed the “Almost Naked Party” by its organizer found themselves blacklisted, facing lawsuits, and forced to give groveling apologies for ostensibly offending Russian troops in Ukraine with their ostentatious partying.
One of the guests of that party, Konstantin Sidorkov, an executive at the social networking site VK, has now ventured into the war zone in Ukraine’s occupied Luhansk region to make amends, according to The Insider.
