A clueless beauty queen living in Russian controlled Crimea has been told her application for citizenship has been cancelled after she accidentally sang a banned folk song.
Many Ukrainians living in occupied Crimea have reportedly been changing their citizenship to Russian, according to Russian state media, in order to secure their futures in the region, and 34-year-old Olga Valeeva was convinced she would be accepted after she was recently voted “Mrs Crimea-2022”.
With a growing social media following, she had decided to entertain her fans by singing the Ukrainian song “Chervona Kalina” – unaware that it was linked by Russia with “Ukrainian fascism” and was a banned song.
She said: “I thought it sounded nice and an ordinary Ukrainian song, I didn’t know the background and it’s crazy to suggest that me, as a mother of two children, would risk my entire life here for a two-minute song. As soon as I found out I asked for it to be deleted, but it was too late.”
Crimean State Duma deputy Leonid Ivlev demanded that the Ministry of Internal Affairs “deal with the incident” and they later issued a statement confirming that she would no longer be allowed to apply for citizenship.
The statement said: “By the decision of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Republic of Crimea, in accordance with the requirements of the law, the application for admission to the citizenship of the Russian Federation of a 34-year-old citizen of Ukraine, found guilty by a court of committing unlawful acts aimed at discrediting the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, as well as public demonstration of prohibited symbols, was rejected.”
She had apparently sung the song with a friend right after winning the contest, and had been punished at the time, and when the conviction was discovered, it was used to also make sure that citizenship was refused.
The ministry added: “As a result of the measures taken, the police detained the offenders and brought them to administrative responsibility. One of them was sentenced to an administrative arrest for a period of 10 days, while the other received an administrative fine of 40,000 rubles.”
