As the former frontman of the band Tarakany!, Dmitry Spirin is one of Russia’s most famous punk rock stars.
An outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin, the Russian government and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he left Russia in 2021 and was named a “foreign agent” in 2024.
Most recently, Spirin collaborated with the art collective Prometheus on Hard Times Cafe, a section of the Amsterdam exhibition Artists Against the Kremlin III: Memory Remains.
Inspired by the Hard Rock Cafe chain, the installation tells the story of Russian musicians’ anti-war protests and lives in exile through personal artifacts donated by artists including Shym of Kasta, Igor Titov, Pussy Riot, Monetochka, Aigel and Spirin himself.
Spirin spoke to The Moscow Times about disbanding Tarakany!, settling in Argentina and building bridges between anti-war Russians and the punk scene in his adopted country.
