The world's largest Lady Gaga fan community is run by a guy from Minsk who was jailed for protests. Russians rushed to claim him as their own
A post by the owner of the singer's fan project about his imprisonment for participating in protests against lack of freedom caused a storm of emotions on social media. Many in the West and Russia perceived it as an example of Russians fighting against Putin's regime.
Kirill Nguyen. Photo: krzzle
The message appeared on September 22, 2026, on the Gaga Daily Twitter account and has already gathered more than three million views. In it, the project's founder explained the reason for his more than two-year absence:
"Sorry for the lack of updates, I was literally in prison. This is Kirill. If you don't know me, I'm the owner of Gaga Daily, and every social media post you've seen from 2009 to 2024 was from me. I never use this account for personal posts, but I feel like I owe you an explanation.
In early 2024, I was arrested in my homeland for protesting against the government and sentenced to over two years in prison. During the MAYHEM era, this account was run by my friends Christian and Anthony, who did an incredible job. Now I'm free, I'm safe, and I can't wait to get back to what I love so much.
I am incredibly touched and grateful for all the tweets and messages of support you've sent me. I love this community so much, and it feels surreal that so many people who don't know each other, whose only connection is something silly like loving one pop star, can form such a strong bond that lasts so many years. Let me know if you have any questions, and feel free to follow me on IG at @krzzle if you want to stay in touch. When LG8?"
This Gaga Daily account is part of the world's largest fan community for singer Lady Gaga and was created back in 2009. Today, the project has an official website with a very active forum, a Twitter account with 487 thousand followers, an Instagram profile with 517 thousand subscribers, and a Facebook page with 1.3 million of the singer's fans.
Lady Gaga has officially recognized this resource as the main platform for her fans. All the project's social media accounts feature her quote: "If I want to know what my fans are saying, I go to Gaga Daily."
"Russian guy"
Neither in this post nor in his personal Instagram account did the guy specify his country or his full name. It is also impossible to find this information by a simple photo search.
For this reason, the opinion immediately began to dominate on social media, both among the Western English-speaking public and among Russians, that the creator of Gaga Daily was held in a Russian prison.
An additional trigger for the viral discussion was Kirill's reply to one user. When asked if he had seen the music video for Lady Gaga's new song "Abracadabra", the account owner replied: "I lived in that moment while it was playing on prison radio."
This spawned a new wave of memes. Western fans and popular pop culture accounts, such as Pop Hub, began massively writing that the track "Abracadabra" had become a hit in Russian prisons. Users were surprised by the fact that pop music was broadcast to prisoners and joked about how inmates in Russia were discovering the singer's work through prison radio.
The topic of Lady Gaga's song "Abracadabra" as a prison hit broke into Twitter trends
One Western user noted the irony that a stan of Taylor Swift, a 19-year-old Israeli woman, was arrested and spent two months in prison for refusing to join the IDF, while a Gaga stan was arrested for protests in Russia. Others were excited that after spending the last year in a Russian prison, the creator of one of the main fan projects would only now discover the singer's new era.
Even a simple English-language tweet "Gaga Daily Russian???" collected three thousand likes and was seen by hundreds of thousands of social media users.
Fans also linked the perceived Russian arrest to Lady Gaga's own history, recalling her concert in Moscow in 2012. At that time, Russian authorities threatened the singer with arrest for her words in support of the LGBT community, which added symbolism to the situation in the eyes of the Western audience.
The topic of the arrest was soon picked up by the Russian segment of Twitter, also explaining it in the context of the struggle against Vladimir Putin's regime.
Anti-war and opposition blogger under the nickname "Prof. Preobrazhensky" stated as a fact that the owner of the largest Lady Gaga account is a Russian who spent more than two years behind bars for protests against the regime. However, he later had to correct the error.
«It's funny that this tweet is going viral today and at the same time, the one asking why Russians aren't openly speaking out about the war. Well, think about it," commented the account with the nickname "n-dyaa," gathering thousands of likes.
Many likes and reposts were also collected by a tweet in which Kirill was called "a Russian guy who served two years in a colony." The author easily brushed off comments about the Belarusian context, saying he just made a passport mistake, and it's all still a general "harsh Eastern European vibe."
The popular Brazilian account StagePop, not understanding the nuances of the political situation in Eastern Europe, even wrote that Kirill was arrested in Ukraine.
Who is Kirill?
As a comparison of facts shows, the conversation is about the former Belarusian political prisoner Kirill Nguyen.
According to Viasna, Kirill Nguyen was detained in early 2024. On May 10, 2024, judge Inna Sivets in the October District Court of Minsk sentenced him under the so-called "people's" article - Part 1 of Art. 342 of the Criminal Code (organization and preparation of actions that grossly violate public order) to 1 year and 6 months in a colony.
On March 25, 2025, a second trial took place under the same article for a different episode, after which the total term of imprisonment was increased to 2 years and 6 months. Kirill Nguyen served his sentence in penal colony No. 17 in Shklov and was released in early April 2026.
The photo, placed on the pages about political prisoner Kirill Nguyen on the resources of Belarusian human rights defenders, as far as can be judged, belongs to another Kirill Nguyen, who was born in 1996 in Hanoi.
(The article has been corrected).