No one question on the stages

 I started researching how Russian drum & bass artists responded to the war in Ukraine—especially after seeing the backlash against techno and house artists like Nina Kraviz, for example, who was heavily criticized for staying silent. What surprised me, though, was that in the DnB scene, there was no such pressure—and I found no one statement from well-known Russian DnB artists; Artists with international bookings— Gydra, Cod3x, Teddy Killerz, Enei, Electrosoul System said nothing. 

I just know, after 2022, major UK-based DnB labels quietly distanced themselves from Russian artists. For example, noticeable absence of Russian names in releases, tour lineups, livestreams, and promo channels. For example, Enei, once a face of Critical Music, is now just… gone, I think. It’s not cancellation—it’s quiet disengagement. 

When I look outside the DnB, the contrast is immediate. In techno—particularly among Russian-born artists—the response has been far more pronounced. For example, Nina Kraviz, techno’s star, faced enormous backlash for her silence, including cancelled gigs and an industry-wide reckoning. In contrast, artists like Dasha Rush and Machine Woman, for example, took a stand: condemning the war, calling out authoritarianism, and standing with Ukraine. 

For example, I’ve liked Nina Kraviz’s music for many years, and when she faced rejection for staying connected to her place of birth—because, I think, she try to preserve something from her culture—I felt quite confused during that time of backlash. I never questioned Nina Kraviz’s identity, and for me, there are no borders in techno, because techno, at its roots, is an international culture. For me, Nina Kraviz belongs to the international spirit of techno music. And during hates towards Nina Kraviz, I was confused because before I had no one thoughts about it all. For me, she was just a good house-techno music producer, no matter on her born place. 

I think — before the war, whether on stages itself, enjoying, in the raw reality from a Russian artist, was something almost no one questioned. When the war began, man was genuinely confused. Nothing used to be a problem, and suddenly, I’m expected to rethink everything. An artist — a terrorist? Maybe someone, somewhere, even broke silence over their feelings about it on a livestream itself. But in drum and bass, I found nothing — no space where such questions could even be asked. In other genres, artists seem to confront these things, to search for our answers. In DnB, it’s like silence.