The artist formerly known as Kanye West, whose 2025 has included several professions of “love” for Hitler, shared an alleged screenshot of a text message early Monday in which it was claimed that Gosha Rubchinskiy’s decision to cease work with YZY was spurred by legal concerns over Ye’s Nazism-related statements.
As seen below, the text, the origin of which was not immediately clear, references the Russian fashion designer’s departure from YZY earlier this year. As previously reported, Rubchinskiy was appointed to serve as the Head of Design for Ye’s label Yeezy, a.k.a. YZY, in late 2023. At the time, Ye was roughly a year removed from an appearance on Alex Jones’ show during which he said, among other things, “I like Hitler.”
In the alleged text shared Monday, an unknown contact is seen telling Ye that Rubchinskiy, whose own career hasn’t been without controversy, and others still have “warm feelings for [Ye] as a friend.” The alleged text goes on to inform Ye of legal advice, presumably received by Gosha’s team, in which they were urged to not have “any commercial relationship with YZY” due to Russian laws regarding Nazism.
“This situation has significantly put us at risk of being seen as ‘supporting Nazism,’ which is a criminal offense in Russia,” the alleged text reads. “Because of that, it would be impossible at this stage to do anything together.”
In 2021, Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, signed a federal law that increased the level of criminal punishment for what the government calls “rehabilitating Nazism.” The law marked an amendment of Article 354.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, which was originally signed into law in 2014. Russia is also one of several countries where the display of flags or symbols associated with Nazism is illegal.
In recent months, Ye has been seen sporadically wearing a swastika pendant, including during parts of his livestream interview with DJ Akademiks. At one point, he was photographed wearing a swastika t-shirt in public.
Rubchinskiy and YZY’s split was confirmed in February, with the designer saying in a statement shared to Instagram at the time that the partnership had “reached its conclusion.” In the same statement, Rubchinskiy said he was “deeply grateful to Ye and the entire YZY team for a memorable experience.”
