Waters spoke via a video link, dressed in a light brown tweed jacket, appearing on a screen looming over representatives of the 15 nations on the council, convened on Wednesday to discuss the situation in  https://www.theguardian.com/world/ukraine" rel="nofollow - Ukraine .

The 79-year-old co-founder of Pink Floyd had been invited to speak by the Russian delegation, but claimed to be representing “4 billion or so brothers and sisters”, the majority of humanity.

Waters owns a $62m estate on Long Island about 150km from UN headquarters, but on Wednesday, he was speaking from Switzerland, under a wooden-beamed ceiling, with a snow-covered mountain visible through the window behind him.

The Russian delegation’s invitation followed an interview Waters had  https://rogerwaters.com/berliner/" rel="nofollow - given to the Berliner Zeitung  in which he had been highly complimentary towards Vladimir Putin, who he said, according to a  https://rogerwaters.com/berliner/" rel="nofollow - translation on his own website , “governs carefully, making decisions on the grounds of a consensus in the Russian Federation government.”

In that 4 February interview, Waters held the west and Ukraine largely responsible for the Russian invasion. However, Waters did not stick to the same line in his security council remarks, blaming Russia and the west for the war.

“The invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation was illegal. I condemn it in the strongest possible terms,” he said. “Also, the Russian invasion of Ukraine was not unprovoked, so I also condemn the provocateurs in the strongest possible terms.” 

Russia’s ambassador to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, glossed over Waters’ reference to the illegality of the invasion. In remarks apparently prepared before Waters spoke, the diplomat complimented him on “a very precise analysis of events”. He called him “one of the most prominent activists of the contemporary anti war movement”.

The Ukrainian ambassador, Sergiy Kyslytsya, was the last to speak and used the opportunity to draw on Pink Floyd’s musical past – and in particular their use of floating pigs at their concerts – to eviscerate Waters.

Kyslytsya noted that Pink Floyd had been banned by the Soviet Union for protesting against the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.

“It is ironic, if not hypocritical, that Mr Waters attempts now to whitewash another invasion,” the Ukrainian diplomat said. “How sad for his former fans to see him accepting the role of just another brick in the wall – the wall of Russian disinformation and propaganda.”

“Keep strumming the guitar, Mr Waters,” the ambassador concluded. “It suits you more than lecturing the security council on how to do its job. No flying pigs here, please.”

from www.theguardian.com

Polly Samson, the wife of Pink Floyd’s  https://www.theguardian.com/music/david-gilmour" rel="nofollow - David Gilmour  and a lyricist on the band’s two most recent albums, has spoken out against former bandleader Roger Waters on Twitter, describing him as an antisemite and a “Putin apologist”.

“Sadly [Waters] you are antisemitic to your rotten core,” she wrote. “Also a Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy, megalomaniac. Enough of your nonsense.”

In response to Samson’s tweet, Waters posted a statement on his own Twitter, reading: “Roger Waters is aware of the incendiary and wildly inaccurate comments made about him on Twitter by Polly Samson, which he refutes entirely. He is currently taking advice as to his position.”

Samson’s tweet is seemingly in reference to an interview Waters did with the Berliner Zeitung newspaper earlier this month,  https://rogerwaters.com/berliner/" rel="nofollow - reposted in translation  on Waters’ website, in which he wonders if “Putin [is] a bigger gangster than Joe Biden and all those in charge of American politics since World War II”, and says that Putin “governs carefully, making decisions on the grounds of a consensus in the Russian Federation government.”

In the interview, Waters also said that “Israel Lobby activists” were trying to have his concerts in Germany cancelled, and that “the Israelis are committing genocide. Just like Great Britain did during our colonial period … We believed ourselves to be inherently superior to the indigenous people, just as the Israelis do in Palestine.” He also expresses his continued support for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, and that he would still play in Moscow, “given that Moscow does not run an apartheid state based on the genocide of the indigenous inhabitants.”

Rogers has long been accused of antisemitism due to his repeated comparisons between the Israeli state and Nazi Germany.  https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/dec/14/pink-floyd-frontman-fury-israel-nazis" rel="nofollow - Writing for the New York Observer in 2013 , Rabbi Shmuley Boteach wrote that Waters had “no decency, you have no heart, you have no soul” for comparing “Jews to monsters who murdered them”. Waters, in response, acknowledged that “the Holocaust was brutal and disgusting beyond our imagination,” but that he “deplore[s] the policies of the Israeli government in the occupied territories and Gaza,” and that he was “not an antisemite”.

In 2017, German public broadcasters  https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/nov/29/roger-waters-broadcasts-cancelled-in-germany-over-accusations-of-antisemitism" rel="nofollow - cancelled the broadcast of Waters’ concerts  in Berlin and Cologne due to “accusations of antisemitism against him”.

Last year, two scheduled  https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/sep/24/roger-water-cancels-gigs-in-poland-amid-row-over-ukraine-war-comments" rel="nofollow - Waters concerts in Poland were cancelled  due to an open letter he sent Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska in which he said that “extreme nationalists” in Ukraine were to blame for “this disastrous war”.

from www.theguardian.com