Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters claims he’s been targeted for “liquidation” after urging Kiev to make peace with Russia Roger Waters is shown performing at New York’s Madison Square Garden on August 30. © Getty Images / Theo Wargo
British rock star Roger Waters, a co-founder of Pink Floyd, has allegedly been placed on a Ukrainian “kill list” after speaking out against Western military meddling and calling on Kiev to make peace with Russia.
In an interview with Rolling Stone published on Tuesday, the 79-year-old pushed back against accusations that he’s been repeating Russian talking points about the conflict in Ukraine. “Don’t forget, I’m on a kill list that is supported by the Ukrainian government. I’m on the fu**ing list, and they’ve killed people recently… When they kill you, they write ‘liquidated’ across your picture. Well, I’m one of those fu**ing pictures.”
Waters gave the example of Darya Dugina, the Russian journalist murdered in August after appearing on the Ukrainian Mirotvorets list. As the musician noted, her entry on the list was marked “liquidated” after she was killed in a car-bombing. Others who have questioned or criticized the Kiev regime, such as photojournalists Andrea Rocchelli of Italy and Andrei Stenin of Russia, have also been killed after appearing on the Mirotvorets list. The site lists personal information on its blacklist targets, which also include politicians and NGO activists.
Mirotvorets, or “Peacemaker,” is an independent database of individuals whom anonymous moderators consider to be threats to Ukrainian national security. The site denies being a kill list; rather, it claims to be a source of information for law-enforcement agencies and “special services” about pro-Russian terrorists, separatists and war criminals, among others. It allegedly has links to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry.
Waters stirred backlash earlier this year, when he suggested that US President Joe Biden was a “war criminal” for fueling the Ukraine crisis and sent an open letter to the wife of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, urging her to help “stop the slaughter” by pushing for a negotiated peace deal with Russia. He later sent an open letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin, asking for guarantees that Russia wouldn’t expand beyond Crimea and the Donbass region.
Pressed by Rolling Stone on why he isn’t supportive of Ukraine’s resistance against Russian forces, Waters said, “Because it’s an unnecessary war, and those people should not be dying. And Russia should not have been encouraged to invade Ukraine.” He also dismissed reports of Russian war crimes in Ukraine as Western propaganda.
Two concerts that Waters had scheduled for next April in Krakow, Poland, may be canceled because of his push for a negotiated peace in Ukraine, the musician said late last month. “Draconian censoring of my work will deny them the opportunity to make up their own minds,” he said of his Polish audiences.
The wide-ranging Mirotvorets kill list also includes Faina Savenkova, a 13-year-old girl in the Lugansk People’s Republic who called for the United Nations to end the fighting that has dragged on in her region since 2014.