Kirill Nguyen, the founder of Lady Gaga's most prominent fan site, is back online after spending two and a half years in prison in Belarus.

On Tuesday, Nguyen posted from the @GagaDaily account on X: "Sorry about the lack of updates, I was literally in prison 😭". The account had gone dark in February 2024. His return drew an outpouring of messages from fans, some of whom have followed the site since 2009.

Nguyen, now 32, founded Gaga Daily at 14, after watching Gaga perform "Just Dance" on YouTube. "I made the website in, like, a day, and then [Gaga] blew up, and I watched the website hit first 100 views a day, then a thousand, then like a million," he told Pitchfork.

In 2020, Nguyen attended a protest in Belarus, where he was raised and lived most of his life. The country had just returned Alexander Lukashenko — "Europe's last dictator" — to a sixth presidential term in a widely disputed election. "I just came out with a flag and walked," Nguyen says. "It was a regular protest like you guys have in America every day." Four years later, he returned to visit family in Belarus and was arrested by state police.

Nguyen asked to keep his current location off the record, but he has wasted no time catching up on fandom. "Please excuse me if I act like it's my first time experiencing the MAYHEM era because it literally is," he wrote on X. He has also begun posting in his own voice, something he once considered "unprofessional."

The most meaningful messages, he says, come from longtime readers: "The ones that feel the most special are from fans who've known the page since 2009 and say, 'I used to be in high school and go to your website five times a day, 50 times a day. Now I'm 20 years older and I'm still a fan, and I hope you're doing well.'"

Nguyen remains struck by the scale of the response. "I'm very aware that I'm not a celebrity—I'm not even an influencer. I just happen to run this page," he says. "I've had posts go viral with millions of views and likes, but it was always about Gaga. This time, it's about me. I've never experienced anything like this before."

In prison, Nguyen heard Gaga's 2025 single "Abracadabra" for the first time on the radio, knowing only its title from a letter friends had sent. "I recognized the voice, recognized the beat," he says. "For the first time in maybe 20 years, I was hearing a song without hearing any snippets, without knowing what people thought about it." He heard it roughly three times a day as it grew popular on the prison's playlist, alongside tracks by Troye Sivan, Kim Petras and Nicki Minaj.

Two friends — Christian, in the United States, and Anthony — ran the Gaga Daily accounts in his stead from February 2025 until his release, after Nguyen managed to pass a note through his lawyer.

Nguyen was released before the news broke that Gaga had become a mother. "I'm just really happy for her like everybody else," he says. He has no expectations of Gaga speaking out on Belarus: "As a fan, what I care about, what I have opinions on, is what the next record is going to sound like. What I hope for is that it comes out sooner than later."