“Most of our people are to blame. Those people who don’t think with their own heads.Those people who now rejoice in the letter ’Z’. If my great-grandfather, who went all the way to Berlin and was awarded the Order of Suvorov, had seen you all. If he had known that, 75 years later, his country would proudly create its own swastika while considering itself Europe’s liberator, treacherously attacking a brotherly country 28.5 times smaller in size than ours in the early hours of the morning, he would have shot himself rather than go on fighting for you.
Who else is to blame?
Me, all the intelligentsia, all the voices of the generation, all the musicians. For the fact that each of us wasn’t brave enough. For the fact that we could have done more, but were afraid or lazy. For realising reality too late.
Finally, I want to point out three things.
First: I appeal to our state and army to come to their senses and stop destroying the cities and the lives of our brotherly people.
Second thing: I ask forgiveness from all the Ukrainian people for the suffering that our country has caused you. I ask for forgiveness, for our state, for myself, for our people, because someone has to do it and it so happens that this difficult task always falls on people like me, because true evil never has enough courage to admit even to themselves in their own evil deeds.
In April 2022, Vladimir Putin gave one of Russia’s most controversial rappers, The Face, a special present: he designated him a ‘foreign agent’. [A Putin-era law, inRussia, this means that the person, usually a media figure or platform, is required to undertake regular audits and has to present their work as being influenced by malign foreign influence]. He is the first musician to ever receive the government branding. A vocal critic of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Face has more than a million monthly Spotify listeners and an even larger Instagram footprint. He is a force to be reckoned with for a government increasingly intent on curbing freedom of speech. Moscow often uses this foreign agent designation to target and harass some of its most persistent critics, ranging from institutions to private individuals. The Face has left Russia. We from SLEEK had planned a bigger story with him in this issue. For security reasons and his current situation, we are moving this to later this year. Nevertheless, it was important for us to publish his statement now and here.
As featured in SLEEK 73 – PASSION. Available in print and digital here.