Russian influencers cry over Kremlin’s decision to ban Instagram: ‘I shared my life, my work, and my soul’

Instagram’s parent company Meta was declared an ‘extremist organisation’ by Vladimir Putin’s government

Russian Instagram influencers bid the platform a teary goodbye as the Kremlin’s ban on the social media app came into effect.

The Russian government announced the ban on Friday in retaliation to Meta’s decision to allow Ukrainians to post about violence towards invading Russian troops.

The social media giant was declared an “extremist organisation” by Vladimir Putin’s government and has also seen Facebook banned in the country.

Reality TV star Olga Buzova, who has 23.3 million Instagram followers, posted a tearful video on Sunday night about the loss of the platform.

“I am not afraid of admitting that I do not want to lose you,” she said in Russian.

“I do not know what the future holds. I don’t know. I just shared my life, my work, and my soul. I did not do this all as a job for me, this is a part of my soul. It feels like a big part of my heart, and my life is being taken away from me.”

Девушка-блогер плачет из-за блокировки инстаграм. Может уже пора переставать быть вне политики и включить мозги? Все крупные звёзды, кто не высказался в первую неделю против войны, вероятно, просто решили отмолчаться и переждать. Просто позор. pic.twitter.com/DgJZBky6J7

— Соболь Любовь (@SobolLubov) March 12, 2022

She signed off her video by telling her followers that she was “going to go and continue crying.”

Other Russian influencers begged their followers to move across to Telegram or the VK platform.

“Instagram is no more,” wrote Valeria Chekalina in her Instagram bio, alongside the crying face emoji.

“This (Instagram) is my life, this is my soul. This is what I have been waking up to and falling asleep with for the last five years,” said tearful Karina Nigay, a fashion blogger with nearly 3 million followers.

“I’m in a state of resentment and nowhere near a state of acceptance.”

Not everyone was supportive of the influencers’ plight.

“God, in Ukraine, people are dying, children are in the subway, there is nowhere to sleep, they have lost everything, and you are crying because of Instagram,” one person wrote as a comment in Ms Buzova’s post.