The Soviet District Court of Ufa on Tuesday, August 16, found the leader of the rock band DDT Yuri Shevchuk guilty of publicly “discrediting” the armed forces of the Russian Federation and fined the musician 50,000 rubles. The defense is appealing the sentence. Shevchuk was not present at the hearing. In his statement, he said he was in quarantine due to contact with a person infected with coronavirus.

Before the verdict was announced, Pavel Chikov, head of the human rights organization Agora, published Yuri Shevchuk’s anti-war statement. “I, Yuri Shevchuk, have always been against wars, in any country and at any time… I am also against the ongoing eight-year war in Donbass and the current NMD in Ukraine,” the statement reads.

Shevchuk’s resonant statement

The Ufa court began considering Yuri Shevchuk’s administrative case on August 5. The protocol for the musician was drawn up on May 18 after the DDT concert in Ufa. According to police, the case was opened “in connection with the provocative statements of a rock musician during a concert”.

During the speech, Shevchuk, in particular, spoke about the motherland and the president: “Fatherland, friends, this is not … the president, who must be procrastinating all the time, kissed. The motherland is a beggar grandmother at the station selling potatoes. This is the homeland.” Yuri Shevchuk also said his “heart aches terribly” because of the conflict in Ukraine. “We are against war,” he emphasized.

In July, Fontanka reported that Yuri Shevchuk was on a list of Russian musicians whose performances were deemed undesirable by authorities. In April, DDT’s show in Tyumen was cancelled. Shevchuk then suggested that this was due to the group’s refusal to perform at the hall with the letter Z, which has become a symbol of support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.