The annexation of Crimea may have provoked an international crisis and ushered in the end of the post-cold war security arrangement in Europe, but on the plus side, it has also served as artistic inspiration for one Russian politician, who has used the occasion to release a surreal and often out-of-tune ode to the peninsula.
Andrei Ivantsov, a local legislator in the city of Astrakhan for the nationalist Liberal Democrat party (LDPR), recorded Crimea, a track filled with syrupy verses about the peninsula’s beauty.
The video for the songs opens with Vladimir Putin’s voice saying that the people of Crimea have voted for “reunification with Russia”, as Ivantsov strolls through a snowy forest. “After a long cold winter, Crimea has awoken,” croons Ivantsov, before he is joined by a woman on guitar for a verse about seagulls. The song adds to Ivantsov’s idiosyncratic oeuvre — some of his tracks have a political theme but others, like My Jaguar Is Very Fast, do not.
Ivantsov is not the only Russian politician to star in homemade music videos. Dmitry Rogozin, the country’’s deputy prime minister and formerly its ambassador to Nato, was featured in his wife’s music video Stay Forever, recorded in the grounds of a Russian embassy.
“I know what you want, and I know what you think. Making love to me is like having a good drink,” Tatiana Rogozina sings in English, in a clip interspersed with shots of her husband sitting, with a pensive expression, behind a desk.
Dmitry Rogozin has been active over the Crimea crisis as well, tweeting a photograph of himself this week with the caption: “Crimea is ours. Basta”.
The peninsula’s politicians have also revealed a love of singing. Olga Kovitidi, who will represent Crimea in Russia’s upper house of parliament, the federation council, is a keen singer who appeared on stage many times at celebration concerts during the annexation of Crimea.
The multi-talented parliamentarian also choreographed a performance in which she stars as a wailing muse together with a youth dance troupe, who represent Greek victims of fascists during the Second World War, according to the captions.
—By arrangement with the Guardian
