A Crimean court fined three women 15,000 rubles (€138) for “discrediting” the Russian army, the Interior Ministry announced on Friday.

The incident took place in a water park in the city of Alushta on 8 August. The ministry said in a statement that the three women, who work as children’s entertainers in the water park, were “publicly dancing” to a song “with an unacceptable meaning” by a Ukrainian artist.

Pro-war Telegram channel Crimea SMERSH posted a video showing the women dancing to Verka Serduchka’s song Gulyanochka. One of the lyrics is “Ukraine has not perished yet if we’re partying like this”. Verka Serduchka, the drag persona of Ukrainian artist Andriy Danylko, has been popular in Russia and Ukraine for decades. Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Danylko has been vehemently anti-war and launched a Help for Ukraine concert tour, performing in multiple countries.

The water park employees, aged 19, 20, and 26, were detained the next day. According to the ministry, two of them were Russian citizens who came to Alushta for summer work, while the third woman was a Crimean native.

The same Telegram channel later posted a video showing the women apologising and then singing the song Vladimir Putin is a good fellow.

In December 2022, three men were arrested in Crimea and charged with “discrediting” the Russian Armed Forces by “listening and loudly singing Ukrainian nationalists’ songs”.

In May 2023, the mayor of Krasnodar Yevgeny Naumov ordered the city’s karaoke clubs be inspected after a Verka Serduchka song was performed in one of them.