Artist Nagiev, grandson of an Iranian and a Latvian, has faced numerous problems at 48 0 7

Popular actor and TV presenter Dmitry Nagiev has effectively been "canceled" in Russia: he has been removed from all advertising banners, his advertising contracts have been terminated, and he has been taken off television and out of films. This is reported by informed sources from "Dozhd". According to the channel's interlocutors, the reason was the artist's statements, which were perceived as criticism of the war in Ukraine.

In December 2025, at the premiere of the film "Yolki 12," Nagiev, responding to a journalist's question about the popularity of the comedy, stated that viewers were tired of the abundance of war films. "So many war films, I just can't take it anymore — dullness, dirt," he said, noting that "Yolki" provide the illusion of a "peaceful happy life." When asked about "personal adventures" over the past year, the artist replied: "You are asking me in the fourth year of the war, what adventures have happened in my life?".

After this, Dmitry Guliyev, a member of the Kursk Regional Duma from "United Russia" and a participant in the invasion of Ukraine, sent requests to the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Culture demanding to recognize Nagiev as a "foreign agent" and limit his participation in projects with state funding. In the letter, the deputy called the showman a "tired figure" who "consciously distances himself from the country," and a "character who barks with a wise look." According to him, the actor "ran away from responsibility like a little child" and spends most of his time abroad.

Nagiev has criticized the Russian authorities before. For example, in 2018, in an interview with Yuri Dud, the actor advocated for limiting the terms of power for the president: "There is a written term for how many times you can go into power... I do not believe that one should go into power as long as one pleases," he said. In March 2022, after Vladimir Putin unleashed a full-scale war in Ukraine, Nagiev published a video set to Boris Grebenshchikov's song "Train in the Fire" with the words: "I love you, despite the bitter taste of lost hopes... As my grandfather used to say before Communion: 'What have I, the old man, done?'" He later stated that he would not leave Russia, and in April published a black-and-white photo with the caption "Maybe enough."

In 2023, Nagiev refused to host the "Muz-TV" ceremony. "The time will come, we will work... But for now, as my grandfather said, 'a fig for you, not a honey fair in Luzhniki,'" he said then. In early 2026, the actor filmed in the UAE with Ukrainian blogger Natalia Lyubimova, who raises funds for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which caused outrage among Z-patriots. Actress Yana Poplavskaya saw this as "support for the Ukrainian army."

Nagiev's paternal grandfather, Nikolai (Gulam), fled from Iran to Ashgabat with his parents, who were Iranians, after World War I. On the way, his parents died of hunger, and the boy ended up in a Turkmen orphanage, where he was given the Azerbaijani surname Nagiev in honor of the people who brought him there, as well as a new name — Nikolai. He spoke Turkmen and Arabic but communicated in Russian, dying of gangrene when Dmitry Nagiev was 9 years old. His paternal grandmother, Gertrude Tsopke, served as a ballerina in the corps de ballet of the Bolshoi Theatre and moved to Ashgabat after marriage. She was half German and half Latvian. Her ancestors were Latvians with the surname Leie and Germans with the surname Tsopke; after her husband's death, she moved to Leningrad to live with her son.

His father, Vladimir Nikolayevich Nagiev, while living in Ashgabat, played in the Red Army Theatre until he was 17, but he was not accepted into a theater university. He later worked at the Leningrad Optical and Mechanical Plant. In Leningrad, he met his first wife, Lyudmila Zakharovna. After the divorce, he moved with his mother to a room on Yaroslavsky Avenue.

His maternal grandfather was the first secretary of the Petrograd District Committee of the CPSU. During the Great Patriotic War, he participated in the battle at Nevsky Pyatachok and was wounded: a bullet entered 3-4 centimeters from his heart and exited from his back. After recovering, he returned to the front. In his programs, Dmitry often mentions his grandfather Zakhar, quoting his phrases (or attributing his own to him). His maternal grandmother, Lyudmila Ivanovna, sang in the Kirov Theatre.

His mother, Lyudmila Zakharovna Nagieva (1938 — October 30, 2015), was a philologist, a teacher, and an associate professor in the Department of Foreign Languages at the Military Academy of Communications (Saint Petersburg).

His younger brother, Yevgeny Nagiev (born July 1, 1971), is an entrepreneur, owner of a car wash and a chain of mini-hotels. He is interested in racing. He served in the police at the ROVD in Saint Petersburg. After resigning, he worked as the head of security at a large night disco in the "Art" cinema. He worked as a bodybuilding instructor, trained his older brother, and appeared in the series "The Mole."

His aunt, Nadezhda Zakharovna, sang in Sandler's choir.

Dmitry Nagiev himself calls himself a "Russian Orthodox person."