Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters is denying reports he canceled two upcoming concerts in Poland amid outrage about his stance on Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Waters had sent an open letter to Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska earlier this month in which he blamed “extreme nationalists” in Ukraine for setting the country “on the path to this disastrous war.”
He also criticized the West, the U.S. in particular, for supplying Ukraine with weapons and accused NATO of provoking Russia.
Polish media reported that the two shows scheduled for April 21 and 22 at the Tauron Arena in Kraków had been canceled, citing an arena official.
“Roger Waters’ manager decided to withdraw… without giving any reason,” Tauron Arena Krakow’s Lukasz Pytko reportedly said Saturday.
But in a social media post Saturday evening, Waters said the reports were inaccurate and called out two media outlets specifically, The Guardian and Gazeta Krakowska.
“Your papers are wrong in their assertions that either, I or my management, has canceled my forthcoming shows in Krakow, we haven’t,” Waters wrote on Facebook.
He also addressed Kraków city councilor Łukasz Wantuch, who has called for a vote on a proposal declaring Waters a persona non grata. City councilors are expected to vote on the resolution this week.
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Wantuch has also urged a boycott of Waters’ concerts in Poland.
Waters said the resolution came in response to his “public efforts to encourage all involved in the disastrous war in Ukraine, especially the governments of the USA and Russia, to work towards a negotiated peace, rather than escalate matters towards a bitter end that could be nuclear war and the end of all life on this planet.”
He added that Wantuch seems to “know nothing” of his history of “working, all my life, at some personal cost, in the service of human rights.”
“If Mr Łukasz Wantuch achieves his aim, and my forthcoming concerts in Krakow are canceled, it will be a sad loss for me, because I have been looking forward to sharing my message of love with the people of Poland, something I have been doing on many tours over a career that has lasted in excess of fifty years,” Waters wrote in his statement.
“And also, regrettably, it will deny the people of Krakow the opportunity to see my current show, ‘This Is Not A Drill,’ which is an important addition to a lifetime’s body of work,” he continued. “His draconian censoring of my work will deny them the opportunity to make up their own minds.”
