English musician Roger Waters, one of the founders of the band Pink Floyd, found himself at the center of a scandal after Russia invited him to speak at the UN Security Council on Wednesday at a meeting demanded by the authorities in Moscow on the issue of arms supplies to Ukraine, Reuters reports.

• “Once upon a time, Russian diplomacy was serious. What’s next? Mr. Bean?” said a diplomat from the UN Security Council on condition of anonymity.

Roger Waters was criticized by supporters of Ukraine when, in September 2022, he published on his website an open letter to the first lady of Ukraine, Olena Zelenska. In that letter, the English musician opposed the supply of Western weapons to the Kyiv authorities.

• “Let’s see what he tells us. He has his own point of view, and you will hear it tomorrow,” Russian ambassador to the UN Vasyl Nebenzia said on Tuesday, Agerpres writes with reference to Reuters. “Maybe he’ll sing something for us,” he jokingly added.

The 15-member UN Security Council has met dozens of times since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. But the Council was unable to take any action as Russia is one of the veto-wielding countries along with the US, China, Great Britain and France.

“Anti-Semite to the core”

Polly Samson, the wife of Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour and the lyricist on the band’s last two albums, has attacked former band leader Roger Waters on Twitter, calling him an “anti-Semite” and “Putin apologist,” The Guardian reports. .

“Unfortunately (Waters), you are anti-Semitic to the core. In addition, Putin’s apologist is a liar, a thief, a hypocrite, a tax evader, a misogynist, sick of envy, megalomania. Enough of your bullshit,” she wrote.

In response to Samson’s tweet, Waters released a statement: “Roger Waters is aware of Polly Samson’s inflammatory and wildly inaccurate comments about him on Twitter, which he completely rejects. He is currently receiving counseling regarding his position.”

Samson’s message apparently refers to an interview Waters gave to the Berliner Zeitung newspaper earlier this month, republished in translation on Waters’ website, in which he questioned whether “Putin (is) a bigger gangster than Joe Biden and all those who have dealt with American politicians since the Second World War,” and also says that Putin “rules cautiously, making decisions based on consensus within the government of the Russian Federation.”

In the interview, Waters also said that “lobbyists in Israel” tried to cancel his concerts in Germany and that “the Israelis are committing genocide”. Just as Britain did during our colonial period… We saw ourselves as inherently superior to the indigenous population, as the Israelis do in Palestine.” He also expresses his continued support for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and that he will continue to speak in Moscow “given that Moscow is not running an apartheid state based on the genocide of indigenous peoples.”

Rogers has long been accused of anti-Semitism because of his repeated comparisons between the state of Israel and Nazi Germany. In 2013, for the New York Observer, Rabbi Shmuli Botich wrote to Waters that he had “no decency, no heart, no soul” to compare “Jews to the monsters who killed them.” In response, Waters admitted that “the Holocaust was brutal and heinous beyond our imagination” but that he “grieved” [s] the policies of the Israeli government in the occupied territories and Gaza” and that “he was not anti-Semitic”.

In 2017, German broadcasters canceled the broadcast of Waters’ concerts in Berlin and Cologne due to “accusations of anti-Semitism against him”.

Last year, Waters’ two planned concerts in Poland were canceled because of an open letter he sent to Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, in which he said “nationalist extremists” in Ukraine were to blame for “this catastrophic war.”