The founder of Pink FloydRoger Waters, today asked the UN Security Council for an immediate ceasefire in the war in Ukraine and said he spoke “on behalf of four billion brothers and sisters of the silent majority”.
Roger Waters, who has spoken several times in public about the war in Ukraine, was invited by Russia to speak before the Council, after presenting him as “a civil activist in favor of peace”and although he condemned the invasion of Ukraine -the only criticism he made against Russia-, Waters also condemned “the provocateurs”, because according to him the invasion “was not carried out without provocation”, thus echoing Moscow’s theses.
The musician, also known for his defense of the Palestinian cause and his frequent clashes with Israel, based his videoconference speech on generic calls for peace, frequently using the expression “We the people” and recalling that wars “tear the planet apart.”
According to Waters, the war only enriches the arms lobby in the world, but “There are many of us who do not share the benefits of this war industry (for this reason) the only sensible path is to call an immediate ceasefire.”
Waters’ speech was immediately taken up by Russian ambassador Vasili Nebenzia, who praised the musician’s “powerful case” against the war, which he said “demonstrates the great level of concern of the world’s ‘intelligentsia’.”
Nebenzia thus took up Waters’s words to warn that the constant flow of arms, experts and equipment from European countries towards Ukraine is forcing Western countries to increase their defense budgets and thus enrich the arms industrywho in 2022 -he said- lived the best of his last years.
Representatives of Atlantic countries, such as the United States, France or the United Kingdom, responded to Nebenzia’s words, recriminating Russia for speaking of the dangers of arms escalation when it is proven – they said – that Moscow has resorted to Iranian drones , North Korean missiles and all kinds of military aid from Belarus.
Diplomats speaking at the Council today made almost no reference to Waters’s speech, but the representative of UkraineSergíy Kyslytsya, did lash out at him and remind him of his own inconsistency when last September he himself described Vladimir Putin as “a new Hitler” in an interview.
Kyslytsya reviewed Pink Floyd’s most famous records and recalled that in 1979, when the group released “The Wall”, the album was banned in the Soviet Union due to the group’s positions against the invasion of Afghanistan.
So he asked Waters – who listened intently to the entire Council session from his home – how he was now trying to wash face of another such invasion. “As if they want to become another brick in the wall, the wall of disinformation and Russian propaganda,” he said.
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