President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has responded to a petition calling for rapper and producer Oleksii Potapenko, known as Potap, to be stripped of his title of Honored Artist. The appeal, which collected more than 25,000 signatures, was forwarded to Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi and Acting Head of the Security Service of Ukraine Oleksandr Poklad.
According to the response published on the President’s Office website, Koretskyi and Poklad must review the issue raised in the petition within their respective areas of authority and in accordance with the procedure established by law.
Zelenskyy thanked the signatories for their active civic stance and support for initiatives aimed at protecting Ukraine’s cultural and information space from Russian influence and narratives.
Conditions for revoking state awards
The president’s response states that state awards may be revoked in two cases:
- following a guilty court verdict convicting a person of a serious or especially serious crime, a criminal offense against the foundations of Ukraine’s national security, peace, the security of humanity, or international legal order;
- by a decision of the National Security and Defense Council to impose sanctions.
Grounds for sanctions may include, among other things, actions aimed at promoting or propagating the aggressor state and its authorities, or justifying or recognizing as legitimate the occupation of Ukraine’s territory. Proposals for sanctions may be submitted to the National Security and Defense Council for consideration by, among others, the government and the Security Service of Ukraine.
“It should be noted that materials concerning the imposition of sanctions must contain sufficient information, a description of actions and facts confirming the existence of grounds for the unquestionable application of sanctions, proper substantiation of the future decision, as well as the application of legal grounds.”
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine
What the petition states
Kateryna Taran published the petition on the President’s Office website on August 28. Within several days, it collected the 25,000 signatures required for consideration.
The petition’s author believes that Potap’s public activities “do not correspond to the status of a person honored with a Ukrainian state award and contain signs of promoting the Russian-language cultural environment and public interaction with representatives of the aggressor state.”
Taran cited the following circumstances:
- the public use and promotion of Russian-language cultural products;
- public statements and actions concerning the Ukrainian language that may be perceived as devaluing, mocking, or contrasting it with Ukrainian national identity;
- cooperation with Russian citizens and representatives of the Russian show business industry;
- residing outside Ukraine.
At the same time, the author stressed that living abroad in itself is not an offense and cannot serve as an independent basis for revoking a state award. In her view, this circumstance should be considered together with a person’s other public actions when assessing whether they meet the status of an award recipient.
On September 17, the Verkhovna Rada did not support an appeal to Zelenskyy to strip Potapenko of his title: 198 members of parliament voted in favor, which was insufficient for the decision to pass.
In September, Potap and Nastya Kamenskikh gave an interview to Russian journalist Kateryna Gordeeva. According to him, during the full-scale war, he repeatedly left Ukraine under the pretext of charitable activities while also pursuing commercial projects. In 2025, the artist also stated that he had left Ukraine more than 14 times since the start of the full-scale invasion and had stopped writing songs in Russian, although he continues to use the language in everyday life.
