In Kyiv, a concert of the legendary band Laibach was canceled because the musicians refused to renounce everything Russian
The concert of the legendary Slovenian band Laibach in Kyiv, which was announced for March 31, has been cancelled. The musicians confirmed that they were required to publicly brand everything Russian, but they refused.
At the same time, in 2015 the group performed in North Korea without any problems, reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
The Laibach concert was supposed to be the first performance of a Western group in Kyiv since the beginning of the SVO.
“On the anniversary of the military aggression against Ukraine, we wanted to show support and solidarity with the Ukrainian state and people, so we checked whether it was possible to hold a concert in Kyiv. The main reason for the cancellation is allegedly several of our statements and interpretations about the possible causes of the Ukrainian-Russian war, which are not fully consistent with the dominant Ukrainian vision,” the group said in a March 1 commentary to the BBC.
As part of the promotion of the concert, Laibach called the armed conflict in Ukraine “a geopolitical conflict between Russia and America on the territory of Ukraine,” “a cynical proxy war for the geostrategic interests of superpowers and financial capital, the military industry, etc.”
“The concert was canceled due to the protest of Ukrainians against the arrival of the Laibach group, which was caused by their misunderstanding of the cause of the war. The audience considers their words pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian,” Vlad Lyashenko, organizer of the group’s concert in Kyiv, told the BBC.
The group refuted Lyashenko's claims, emphasizing its position that the Russian army illegally entered Ukrainian territory and "started a terrible war" and that Ukraine has every right to self-defense. But this did not help, and the real reason for canceling the concert turned out to be something else.
Balkan media reported that the Laibach group was demanded to renounce all Russian writers, artists, performers, etc., to which they did not agree.
“They were categorically asked to declare that all Russians are bad, and that all Russian art is worthless,” reported the Slovenian news agency STA.
Laibach told the BBC that the concert organizer "did not directly make such a request", but they also believe that their "admiration for certain Russian creators" is one of the reasons for the cancellation of the performance.
“We love Dostoevsky, Bulgakov, Tchaikovsky, Scriabin, Mayakovsky, Tatlin, Rodchenko and El Lissitzky - to name just a few - and always will, but in this senseless war between Russia and Ukraine, we are wholeheartedly on the side of Ukraine and its people ", the Laibach group wrote on social networks on February 24.
Kyiv's reaction was predictable.
“For us now everything Russian is poisonous. Russian literature is evil, the Russian language is evil, everything Russian only causes hatred. I see you didn’t know this, but your statements caused a lot of indignation,” these were the words of the organizers of the concert in Kyiv quoted in Laibach.
It is worth noting that the Laibach group, created in 1980 in Yugoslavia, was banned in this country in 1985-1987. They have always been shocking - for example, during concerts in Sarajevo besieged by the Serbs in 1995, they sang Serbian songs. In 2015, Laibach became the first high-profile European band to perform in North Korea. But, apparently, today’s Ukraine still needs to grow to this level.
Как reported “PolitNavigator”, one of the founders of the legendary British rock band Pink Floyd, Roger Waters, recognized Crimea as Russian.
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