Roger Waters to speak on Russia’s behalf at UN Security Council meeting
Roger Waters has done little to distance himself from suggestions that he is a pro-Putin advocate, and now it has been announced that he has been invited to speak on Russia’s behalf at a UN Security Council meeting scheduled to take place later today (Wednesday, 8th February).
Russian UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzi said of the Pink Floyd co-founder: “Let’s see what he will say. He has a position, and you will hear it tomorrow.” Meanwhile, the First Deputy Permanent Representative of Russia, Dmitry Polyanskiy, looked to confirm Waters’ attendance.
He said: “I can confirm: for tomorrow’s UN Security Council briefing on prospects of peaceful settlement of crisis around Ukraine in the context of increasing Western arms deliveries to this country, we invited as a briefer famous British Musician and rock-musician, Roger Waters.”
Waters had previously spoken out against Ukraine and NATO, blaming them for provoking Russia and sparking the invasion of Ukraine. He said in August during an interview with CNN: “This war is basically about the action and reaction of NATO pushing right up to the Russian border, which they promised they wouldn’t do when [Mikhail] Gorbachev negotiated the withdrawal of the USSR from the whole of Eastern Europe.”
The keyboard player also claimed that suggestions of Russian war crimes were “lies” and that US President Joe Biden should be considered the real “war criminal”, stating: “[Biden] is fuelling the war in Ukraine,” he said. “That is a huge crime. Why won’t the United States of America encourage Zelensky to negotiate, obviating the need for this horrific, horrendous war?”
David Gilmour, Waters’ ex-Pink Floyd bandmate, echoed his wife’s tweet calling out Waters and his views. She wrote: “Sadly, you are antisemitic to your rotten core. Also, a Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy megalomaniac. Enough of your nonsense.”
Gilmour followed up, writing: “Every word demonstrably true.”
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