“Go sing in Moscow”: Kraków councillor seeks to stop Roger Waters concerts over Ukraine stance

A councillor in Kraków is seeking to prevent Pink Floyd founder Roger Waters from performing two concerts at an arena in the Polish city next year due to his stance on Russia’s war in Ukraine.

During his current tour, Waters has included Joe Biden in a montage of “war criminals”. He told CNN that the US president has been “fuelling the fire in Ukraine” and should instead “encourage [Volodymyr] Zelensky to negotiate” an end to the war, which is “basically about…NATO pushing right up to the Russian border”.

Waters then wrote to Zelensky’s wife, Olena, saying that her husband had “agreed to totalitarian, anti-democratic…forces of extreme nationalism” that have “crossed any number of red lines set out quite clearly by your neighbours the Russian Federation…and in consequence…set your country on the path to this disastrous war.”

On Friday, it was announced that Waters’ tour, titled “This Is Not A Drill”, will include two dates at Kraków’s Tauron Arena in April next year. That prompted an angry response on social media in Poland, which has been one of Ukraine’s strongest allies since Russia’s invasion.

Later on Friday, city councillor Łukasz Wantuch, who belongs to a group led by mayor Jacek Majchrowski, announced that he would seek to have the concerts “blocked” at a meeting of the council on Wednesday, at which he would appeal directly to the mayor.

Allowing “Roger Waters, an open supporter of Putin, to play in Kraków…would be shameful for our city”, wrote Wantuch. “Let him sing in Moscow.”

This morning, Wantuch published an image of a letter he has addressed to Majchrowski in which he clarifies that they cannot ban Waters from performing completely, but that the concert should not take place in Tauron Arena, which is owned by the city.

The councillor also noted that, wherever it takes place, the concert would represent a security risk as Kraków and its surrounding region are home to “hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians”, who would not take kindly to Waters’ performance.

By March, it was estimated that around 150,000 refugees from Ukraine were being sheltered in Kraków. In Poland as a whole, there are estimated to be around three million Ukrainians – both refugees and pre-war immigrants – representing 7-8% of the country’s population.

A study by the Pew Research Centre earlier this year found that Poles hold the most negative views of Russia among all countries surveyed, with only 2% perceiving Russia positively. Large protests have been held outside the Russian embassy and in May the Russian ambassador was doused with red paint.

Meanwhile, there has been a huge outpouring of support for Ukraine in Poland since Russia’s invasion, with 77% of the public saying that they have been involved in helping refugees and two thirds approving of the government’s actions, which have included strong backing for Kyiv and calls for a tougher line against Moscow.

The Polish authorities have also sought to prevent the spread of Russian propaganda, including by taking Russian TV stations off the air and blocking access to certain websites.

Note: this article has been updated to include the letter published by Łukasz Wantuch this morning.

Main image credit: Sergio Castro/Flickr (under CC BY-NC 2.0)

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.