Pro-Ukrainian hacktivists Silent Crow and the Belarusian group Cyber Partisans breached Aeroflot’s information system, causing nearly half of the Russian airline’s flights to be canceled or delayed on July 28, 2025. The incident — and the supposed need for the Union State to abandon foreign social media and messaging apps in the name of digital sovereignty — was the focus of a discussion between CTV host Grigoriy Azarenok and RT (formerly Russia Today) special correspondent Konstantin Pridybaylo. The Russian correspondent spoke about a trend among young people to embrace what’s their own — meaning Russian — including folk music.
"When I was a kid, I thought Kadysheva was for grandmas — that grandmas listened to her. But her music just makes you want to dance. Kadysheva has sold out Luzhniki twice. No one else has done that in modern Russia in recent years. Well, maybe except for the band Ruki Vverh," Pridybaylo said on July 28, 2025, on the show “Azarenok. Directly."
Nadezhda Kadysheva is the lead singer of the folk music ensemble Zolotoe Koltso. She’s been performing since the late 1980s. And lately, media outlets have been reporting a rise in the Russian folk artist’s popularity.
In the first quarter of 2025, ticket sales for her shows on Yandex Afisha jumped more than fivefold compared with the same period last year—and nearly tenfold compared with 2023. On social media, videos show teenagers forming circle dances at her concerts and singing along in unison.
In 2025, the singer launched a stadium tour. In June she filled the Tatneft Arena in Kazan, drawing a crowd of about 8,500. It was the biggest concert of her career.
But when Konstantin Pridybaylo spoke of a record-breaking performance by Nadezhda Kadysheva at Luzhniki, he wasn’t telling the truth — the singer has yet to perform at the Moscow stadium, which holds around 80,000 people. Such a concert is scheduled for June 2026. WTF journalists checked: tickets are still available, and most of the venue remains unsold. Unlike, for example, the pop group Ruki Vverh, which has also announced a concert at Luzhniki in July 2026. The seating chart on Yandex Afisha shows that many tickets have already been sold. Ruki Vverh has already played three sold-out shows there in a row. Besides the pop group, rapper Basta has also performed successfully at Luzhniki. In 2025, he played two solo shows at the stadium, drawing a total of 144,000 spectators.
