As Ukrainian pop star Ani Lorak was receiving two awards at a Russian music awards ceremony in Moscow on May 31, Ukrainian military forces were fighting against Kremlin-backed separatists in Ukraine’s east - a war that has claimed nearly 150 lives of Ukrainian servicemen alone.
The public outcry was immediate.
“A despicable act. People are dying and someone only sees her career,” Tanya Ika wrote on Lorak’s official facebook page on June 2.
The 2008 Eurovision song contest runner-up from Chernivtsi Oblast said the criticism was unjustified.
“What did I do wrong? I am not a politician, I am a singer,” she told Anton Semenikhin, an activist who approached her at a charity event with a camera, and blamed her for accepting the Russian award.
Ani Lorak’s past attempts to stay aloof of politics has led to some clumsy moves.
The singer refrained from making public statements about protests during the EuroMaidan Revolution, which succeeded in toppling a deeply corrupt President Viktor Yanukovych.
She never appeared at the main rally in downtown Kyiv. Yet she used video footage of the protest’s bloodiest days in February in her music video “Malvi,” released in May.
Ani Lorak refused to be interviewed for this article.
And now, Ani Lorak has plans to perform in Russian-occupied Crimea in August.
When the planned Crimean tour received a flurry of bad press, the information was removed from her official website. Nevertheless, box offices are still offering tickets for two shows in the Russia-annexed region for Hr 300–700. While some saw the Crimean tour as a sign of her accepting the region’s new reality, the 35-year-old singer told Ukrainian 1+1 TV station that “Crimea will always remain Ukrainian” for her.
Ani Lorak wasn’t the only Ukrainian star to be condemned for not dropping the larger Russian market after its aggression toward Ukraine started this spring.
Potap and Nastya Kamenskikh, a pop duo extremely popular both in Ukraine and Russia, also performed at the Ru.tv awards ceremony. While on stage, Potap pulled his pants down and thanked Russia “on behalf of all Ukrainian singers.”
In an interview to Ukrainian 1+1 TV station, music producer Vitaliy Sizyk said that Potap’s gesture was done to please the duo’s Russian audience.
“Russian rednecks are Potap’s main audience. If he loses popularity in Russia, catering in one of Kyiv’s night clubs could become his only means for making a living,” he added.
According to Sizyk, shows in Russia earn Ukrainian stars $40,000-$50,000 per one-hour of performance, while Ukrainian shows pay less.
Two weeks after the awards ceremony, Potap told the audience at his concert in Ordzhonikidze, a city in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, that “his heart was blue-and-yellow,” referring to the colors of Ukraine’s flag.
Another Ukrainian pop star, Taisiya Povaliy, who is also a lawmaker with the pro-Russian Party of Regions faction, performed in Russia during the EuroMaidan protest, and gave a show dedicated to a military holiday in Moscow on Feb. 23, three days after some 50 people, mostly anti-government protesters, were killed in Kyiv, and as the country mourned them.
Soon Povaliy’s husband and manager Ihor Likhuta announced that the singer would relocate to Russia due to the “difficult situation in Ukraine.”
Ukrainian poet and composer Yevhen Rybchynsky, the author of some of Povaliy’s hits, heavily criticized the behavior of Povaloy and other stars who seemed to show the lack of patriotism lately, calling them “the enemies of Ukraine’s people.”
Povaliy refused to provide comments for this article.
In an attempt to preserve Russian audiences, these performers risk losing Ukrainian fans permanently.
Several June shows that Ani Lorak had planned to give in western Ukraine were postponed until this fall after local activists threatened to boycott them.
Olia Positko from Chernivtsi, one of the cities on the tour, shares the public’s outrage.
“It’s hard to enjoy the songs of a singer who cannot give up Russian money. Ani Lorak can repeat even a million times that music is beyond politics, but it is no longer about politics, this is real war,” Positko said.
Kyiv Post staff writer Natalia Trach can be reached at [email protected]
