‘Who washes Putin’s underpants?’ Pet Shop Boys revisit Navalny’s poisoning in a new song released as Russia votes in parliamentary elections.
The British pop group Pet Shop Boys has released a new song, “A Top Secret Washing Machine,” on its YouTube channel. The track was timed to coincide with Russia’s State Duma elections.
Pet Shop Boys
The video’s description quotes remarks Alexei Navalny made at Moscow’s Simonovsky District Court in February 2021. Navalny had just returned to Moscow from Germany, where he was treated after being poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok. He was sentenced to prison on fabricated charges and sent to a penal colony. Three years later, he was killed behind bars — poisoned again, this time with epibatidine.
Here is what Navalny said in court about Vladimir Putin:
He has never taken part in a debate or an election. His only method of fighting is trying to kill people. And no matter how much he tries to portray himself as some great geopolitician, some great world leader, what he resents most about me now is that he’ll go down in history as a poisoner. You know, there was Alexander the Liberator. Or Yaroslav the Wise. And we’ll have Vladimir the Underpants Poisoner. That’s exactly how he’ll go down in history.
In the song, the Pet Shop Boys revisit Navalny’s 2020 poisoning with Novichok. FSB officers entered his hotel room in Tomsk and applied the poison to his underwear.
- Who washes Putin’s underpants?
- Who has to keep them clean
- deep in the bowels of his residence
- in a top secret washing machine?
- Who keeps his secrets secret?
- Is nothing or everything true?
- Is he fatally ill or strong as a horse
- impossible to know or get close to?
- When he poisons an opponent’s underpants
- does he laugh at his brilliant scheme
- knowing he’s got to the root of the problem
- deadly but somehow obscene?
- Is it difficult to sleep at night?
- Does he always sleep alone
- with nightmares of a prison cell
- summoned to be be judged and to atone?
- No, he’ll get away with anything
- like Stalin and Peter the Great
- He’s the only one that ever matters
- He knows what he must dictate
- Meanwhile his underpants are washed
- by a loyal woman or man
- and his secrets will be secret until
- that one unfortunate day his shit hits the fan
The Pet Shop Boys often write songs about events in Russian history. In 2023, the band released a video called ”Living in the Past,” which compared Putin to Joseph Stalin, and in 2024 it put out ”Dancing Star,” dedicated to the dancer Rudolf Nureyev. In 2025, it released ”Hymn” in memory of Navalny.
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Cover photo: Jim Dyson / Getty Images