A decade ago, Russian state TV turned Diana Shurygina’s rape case into a talk show sensation. Now the state is charging her with distributing pornography through OnlyFans.
Diana Shurygina became a public figure in 2017 when the Russian state-controlled television network Channel One devoted several episodes of its talk show Pust’ Govoryat (“Let Them Talk”) to her rape case, drawing enormous public attention.
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Who’s Diana Shurygina?
Diana Shurygina became a public figure in 2017 when the Russian state-controlled television network Channel One devoted several episodes of its talk show Pust’ Govoryat (“Let Them Talk”) to her rape case, drawing enormous public attention.
In April 2016, Shurygina, then 16 and living in Ulyanovsk, went to the police and accused 21-year-old Sergei Semyonov of rape. She said the assault occurred at a birthday party hosted by one of Semyonov’s friends, where a girlfriend had brought her. The two had not known each other before that night. Shurygina said she had been drunk and that Semyonov had used physical force against her.
In December 2016, Semyonov was sentenced to eight years in a strict-regime penal colony on charges of rape and “violent acts of a sexual nature.” The court found that Semyonov had known Shurygina was a minor and had understood that she had not consented to sexual contact with him.
Semyonov’s representatives argued that the verdict was unjust. They claimed that the sex was consensual and that the scrapes and bruises on Shurygina’s body were the result of a struggle with her father, who was trying to remove her from the party. On appeal, a court reduced the sentence to three years and three months in a general-regime penal colony.
Semyonov’s family took his case to Pust’ Govoryat. In early 2017, Channel One aired several episodes devoted to the case, featuring Shurygina and her relatives as well as people close to Semyonov.
Studio audiences and panelists were mostly against Shurygina, and YouTube commenters largely sided with Semyonov, rejecting her account. On social media, users piled on, harassing Shurygina and blaming her outright for what happened.
In early 2018, Semyonov was released early and almost immediately appeared on the television network Russia 1.
What Shurygina did after the ‘Let Them Talk’ episodes
After the broadcasts, the Shurygina family moved from Ulyanovsk to Moscow — her parents said people on the streets of their hometown would not leave them alone.
Shortly after appearing on the show, Shurygina began dating Channel One cameraman Andrei Shlyanin, who is 11 years her senior, and later married him. She also developed a social media following and started earning money from it. In 2019, Shurygina and Shlyanin divorced. She said the main reason was that she did not want to have children.
Shurygina’s next partner was Denis Rebrov, a millionaire blogger with whom she had begun a relationship before the divorce. RIA Novosti reported that during this whirlwind romance, Diana traveled to several countries with Rebrov, got breast augmentation surgery, and underwent treatment at a drug rehabilitation clinic. In 2021, Russian tabloids reported that Shurygina had opened an account on OnlyFans, where she “sold explicit photos and videos of herself.”
In early 2022, Shurygina split from Rebrov. In May 2024, Russian media reported that Shurygina had been detained at a Moscow apartment together with her boyfriend, businessman Svyatoslav Gusev, after neighbors called police about a disturbance. Shurygina and Gusev had been planning to marry in the spring of 2025, but the couple split shortly before the wedding.
Why Shurygina faces criminal charges
On June 16, 2026, a Moscow district court placed Shurygina under house arrest on charges of distributing pornographic material as part of an organized group.
A source at a law enforcement agency told the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti that a criminal case had been opened in connection with the publication of intimate photographs and videos on a Telegram channel that Shurygina administered. The pro-Kremlin Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda claimed the investigation was tied to videos and photographs she distributed through OnlyFans.
Further details of the case have not been made public. The offense is punishable by two to six years in prison.
The law enforcement-linked Telegram channel Shot reported that Shurygina had planned to flee criminal prosecution by traveling to Bali but was detained several days before her scheduled departure.
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