Lady Gaga fan site founder recounts Belarus prison

Kirill Nguyen, the founder of the Lady Gaga fan account Gaga Daily, has described how he spent time in a Belarus prison after being jailed for joining protests against President Alexander Lukashenko.

The account, which has more than four million followers across social media, had gone quiet for about two years. In September, Nguyen wrote to followers: “Sorry about the lack of updates, I was literally in prison.”

Nguyen told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed country that he had run Gaga Daily for more than 15 years after launching it when he was 14. He said he joined the protests that followed Belarus’s August 2020 presidential election, in which Lukashenko claimed victory and the opposition said the vote was rigged.

Nguyen, 32, later moved to Moscow. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, he returned to Belarus, where he was arrested in Minsk in February 2024. He was sentenced to one and a half years in prison, later extended by a year. The Belarusian human rights group Viasna listed him as a political prisoner.

Nguyen said he did not tell anyone in prison that he founded Gaga Daily because he feared it could cause trouble. He told AFP that friends sent letters telling him about Lady Gaga’s single “Abracadabra” while he was still imprisoned in early 2025, and that he waited by prison radio until he heard it.

Since his release, Nguyen has been rebuilding his life outside Belarus and catching up on Lady Gaga news. He said he had received many messages of support from fans.