Morgenstern claims that he was not allowed to enter the UAE after Sobchak’s interview

Rapper Alisher Morgenstern claims that the United Arab Emirates, where he lived recently, blocked his entry into the country. He reported this against the background of problems with entry or with concert activities, which began to appear in a number of countries, such as Indonesia and Thailand, for other Russian musicians or artists recognized in Russia as “foreign agents” or who spoke against the war.

According to Morgenstern, he was informed about the ban on entering the UAE about a month ago at the airport when he was about to return to Dubai from Thailand. Earlier, as the artist claims, his concerts in the UAE began to be canceled. He lived in the country as a tourist without obtaining a residence permit.

The rapper suggested that the entry ban could be connected with his interview with journalist Ksenia Sobchak, in which he talked about his life in Dubai last November. Morgenstern assumes that some “evil people, when they saw my interview with Sobchak, where I boasted that I finally got back on my feet after two and a half years in Dubai, bought an apartment, opened a property,” decided to hurt him. He did not say what kind of people these are. At the same time, Morgenstern emphasized that he “never made political statements from the stage” and hoped for “an early dialogue” with the authorities of the UAE to allow him to enter.

In May 2022, the Ministry of Justice of Russia included Morgenstern in the list of “foreign agents”. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he spoke out against the war. In a recent interview with Sobchak, he said that he did not want to make “political statements”. Even before the war, representatives of the Russian authorities accused him of promoting drugs and insulting veterans.

The day before, the border guards at the Denpasar airport on the island of Bali did not allow the Russian comedian Maksym Galkin, who is also included by the Russian authorities in the list of “foreign agents” and opposes the war, to enter Indonesia. On January 27, he was supposed to give a concert at the Ball. However, he was detained at the airport, despite having a tourist visa.

Galkin wrote on Instagram that he was not allowed into Indonesia at the request of the Russian authorities. “The reason was given almost immediately and repeated several times by different employees of the border service – a letter from the government of the Russian Federation asking me not to be allowed to the Balls. I was shown the letter, but, of course, I was politely refused a copy,” says Galkin.

Earlier, the concerts of Galkin and another comedian, Ruslan Bely, were canceled in Thailand. Broadcasting the position of the Kremlin, the Russian state agency TASS then stated with reference to a source in the Thai entertainment industry that the reason for the cancellation could be the political position of the artists. Bely argued that the Russian diplomatic mission in Thailand appealed to the country’s authorities with a request not to allow the performances of Russian artists who might make political statements. Lawyer Sergey Zhorin, quoted by the state-run Russian agency RIA Novosti, claims that, in particular, there are indeed “black lists” of artists in Thailand, “formed taking into account the position of the Russian authorities.”

The other day, the musicians of the Bi-2 group, who had also condemned the war, were detained in Thailand. They were subsequently fined and ordered to leave Thailand.