A Russian-Belarusian rock band that opposed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine returned to the stage this week, showing resilience following being detained in Thailand in January and threatened with deportation to Russia.
Bi-2, a band formed in the 1980s in Belarus when it was still part of the Soviet Union, left Russia in protest of the attack and has been touring since then in countries with large Russian-speaking communities.
Before the concert in Vilnius on Thursday, band members met with exiled Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya and supporters of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison last month.
“We have become hostages of Russian history,” Egor Bortnik, one of the band’s famous founders, told AFP ahead of another concert in Warsaw on Saturday.
However, Bortnik, 51, and better known by his stage name “Lyova”, said he was “not once morest war”. “On the contrary, I support war. I just want Ukraine to liberate its own territory. Putin should gather his troops and get out of Ukraine,” Bortnik said, using a derogatory term for Russian soldiers often used by Ukrainians.
The band was detained in Phuket, Thailand in January on immigration charges in a case that unsettled Russians critical of President Vladimir Putin living abroad.
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Organizers of their concerts said all necessary permits had been obtained, but the band was mistakenly granted tourist visas and they accused the Russian consulate of waging a campaign to cancel the concerts.
After a week in detention, the band was released and traveled to Israel, where they met with Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz who said in a statement that the episode showed that “music will prevail”.
Several of their concerts in Russia were canceled in 2022 following they refused to perform at venues with banners supporting the war in Ukraine, following which they left the country.
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“I risked my prosperity when the war started and I had to leave Russia. It was unexpected, it was not a process we were prepared for,” Bortnik said.
Bortnik said he was more used to emigration than some of his colleagues who had left following the war because he moved to Israel as a teenager.
“I understand how difficult it is,” he said.
Bortnik has said that he is not a “geopolitician” and does not write songs that are explicitly “political” even though their lyrics can “tear the ever-quivering nerves”. He said Putin’s downfall might be sudden and violent, and would also bring down Belarus’ authoritarian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, who has been in power for three decades.
“If something happens to Putin, there might be a civil war – the finale to every tyranny,” he said. (AFP/Z-3)
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