Since the start of the war in Ukraine, a song has been running through my head, like a news soundtrack.
This is Russians by Sting, to music by Prokofiev. Remember that song from 1985, where he sang about the Cold War and the risk of the Russians (or Americans) detonating a nuclear bomb?
The former member of The Police sang with each chorus: “I hope the Russians love their children too”. That’s the question we’re all asking ourselves right now. We hope that Putin and the Russian generals love their children enough not to blow up the planet.
But another sentence strikes me in this terribly topical song: “There’s no such thing as a winnable war”. Translation: “A war that is won does not exist. »
DOCTOR FOLAMOUR
Yesterday, Sting released a video in which he covers this emblematic song, but revised with simplicity in a guitar-cello version.
“I never thought that song would be relevant again,” he said. Indeed, 37 years ago, who would have believed that one day the Russians would bring down the missiles on the largest nuclear power plant in Europe?
In the message that accompanies the video, Sting says, “In light of one man’s bloody and woefully misguided decision to invade a peaceful and in no way threatening neighbor, this song is, again, a plea for our common humanity”.
In this brilliant song, Sting indeed writes: “Without regard to ideologies, we share the same biology”.
When I saw the Ukrainian nuclear power plant falling into Russian hands on Thursday evening, I thought of the passage of Russians where Sting says, “How do I save my little boy /From Oppenheimer’s deadly toy?” (We know that Julius Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of the Manhattan Project, is recognized as the father of the atomic bomb.)
If Sting shared this video, it’s not to blame the Russians. It’s to raise money for the organization Help Ukraine, which aims to send humanitarian and medical aid to a warehouse in Poland, on the Ukrainian border.
I never believed that singing Imagine by John Lennon, When men will live on love by Raymond Lévesque or Give Peace a Chance of John Lennon holding a candle in his hand would melt the hearts of dictators, executioners or terrorists.
But if it can melt the hearts of Westerners who are going to give money en masse for the Ukrainian population, it will at least do some useful work.
Back then, in 1985, Sting was talking about Khrushchev. Today he would talk about Putin. The dictator has two adult daughters. But he would also have four children with Alina Kabaeva, a former Olympic gymnast (although this has never been confirmed). According to American media, while Putin is bombing Ukraine, and children are dying,
Kabaeva and her four children are sheltered in a hyper-guarded and secure Swiss chalet, with a beautiful Swiss passport…
LOVE NOT WAR
I told you earlier that the music of Russians is by Sergei Prokofiev. A composer born in 1891 in a small village in what was then part of the Russian Empire, but which is today… in Ukraine.
You can not make that up.