Roger Waters Says He’s on Ukraine “Kill List,” Calls Evidence of Russian War Crimes “Lies”
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The post Roger Waters Says He’s on Ukraine “Kill List,” Calls Evidence of Russian War Crimes “Lies” appeared first on Consequence.
Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters thinks Ukraine wants him up against The Wall. In a new interview with Rolling Stone, he claimed to be “on a kill list that is supported by the Ukrainian government.” The 79-year-old also called evidence of Russian war crimes “lies, lies, lies, lies,” and responded to accusations of antisemitism by arguing about the definition of antisemitism and railing against some Jews in the US and UK.
Waters has been eager to share his theories about Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Last month, he wrote an open letter to the First Lady of Ukraine asking that she and her husband “stop the slaughter” by surrendering all the territories that Russia had illegally annexed. Amid criticism that he was “blaming the party who got invaded,” as CNN’s Michael Smerconish put it, he followed up with a letter to President Vladimir Putin that asked for a promise not to “overrun the whole of Europe,” but with no mention of withdrawal from Ukrainian territory.
His new interview further expresses his view that Ukraine and NATO (which Ukraine is not a member of) are responsible for starting the war. “Russia should not have been encouraged to invade the Ukraine,” Waters said, aping Putinists who call the region “the Ukraine,” as if it were a part of a bigger whole and not a sovereign country.
He also reiterated his belief, last expressed in August, that President Joe Biden is a war criminal while Russia and China are relative innocents. “Of course, we — when I say we, I’m now speaking as a taxpayer in the United States — are not. We are the most evil of all by a factor of at least 10 times,” he said. “We kill more people. We interfere in more people’s elections. We, the American empire, is doing all this shit.”
Interviewer James Ball pushed back. A member of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team that covered the NSA wiretapping scandal, Ball brought up evidence of Russian war crimes: “mass graves, the use of rape as a weapon of war, targeting humanitarian convoys, and more.”
Waters retorted, “You’ve seen it on what I’ve just described to you as western propaganda. It’s exactly the obverse of saying, Russian propaganda, Russians interfered with our election, Russians did that. It’s all lies, lies, lies, lies.”
After Ball pointed out that he had spoken to people in Ukraine, as well as Ukrainian and British journalists covering the war on the ground, Waters’ sputtered to a halt and then abruptly changed the subject. Via the full transcript, he said, “Well, yeah, maybe. No, I’m only saying maybe because I read all those reports too. And I search them very carefully to try and divine the truth. And also to see where the information comes from and who it… Don’t forget, I’m on a kill list that is supported by the Ukrainian government,” he said.
Waters continued, “I’m on the fucking list and they’ve killed people recently. There was that young Dugina woman in Paris who I think they were trying to bomb her father. No, in Moscow. They were trying to bomb her father-in-law [her father] and they killed her. But when they kill you, they write liquidated across your picture. Well, I’m one of those fucking pictures.”
Ball also pressed Waters on his stance on Israel, which has sometimes been criticized as antisemitic. “I’m absolutely not antisemitic, absolutely not,” Waters said. “That hasn’t stopped all the assholes trying to smear me with being an antisemite.”
When asked about the definition of antisemitism, Waters said it was, “Nowhere near the IHRA [International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance] definition,” which holds that criticism of Israel can be legitimate, but saying that Israel does not have a right to exist is antisemitic.
“Well, the right of Israel to exist as an apartheid state, I’m complaining about that,” Waters explained. “Saying Israel does not have a right to exist as an apartheid state, any more than South Africa did or anywhere else would, is not antisemitic. It’s protesting part of the workings of a state that you disapprove of. That’s all. But it’s not disapproving of the people who live there or the Jewish faith, for instance, or people because they’re Jewish. It’s disapproving of the fact that they are a supremacist, settler colonialist project that operates a system of apartheid. That’s what we’re criticizing.”
He also saved some criticism for Jewish people in the UK and US, who he said “pay for everything,” and therefore are culpable in the actions of Israel. The full interview is well worth your time; check it out over at Rolling Stone.
Waters is currently on the road with his politically charged “This Is Not a Drill” tour. Tickets are available here.
Roger Waters Says He’s on Ukraine “Kill List,” Calls Evidence of Russian War Crimes “Lies”
Wren Graves
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