Pink Floyd founding member Roger Waters has canceled concerts planned in Poland amid outrage over his stance on Russia’s war against Ukraine. Waters was set to perform at Tauron Arena in Krakow in April of next year, however, Polish media outlets have announced that he has pulled out of the planned dates, as reported by NPR.
A representative from Tauron Arena was quoted by Polish outlets saying, “Roger Waters’ manager decided to withdraw … without giving any reason.”
The cancellation of the shows follows an open letter Waters published this month addressed to the first lady of Ukraine, Olena Zelenska, in which he urged Zelenska and her husband, president Volodymyr Zelensky, to “seek a different route” in regards the Russian war against Ukraine.
“If by ‘support for Ukraine,’ you mean the West continuing to supply arms to the Kiev government’s armies, I fear you may be tragically mistaken,” Waters said. “Throwing fuel, in the form of armaments, into a fire fight, has never worked to shorten a war in the past, and it won’t work now, particularly because, in this case, most of the fuel is (a) being thrown into the fire from Washington DC, which is at a relatively safe distance from the conflagration, and (b) because the ‘fuel throwers’ have already declared an interest in the war going on for as long as possible.”
Elsewhere in the letter, Waters said, “If I’m not wrong, please help me in my honest endeavors to persuade our leaders to stop the slaughter, the slaughter which serves only the interests of the ruling classes and extreme nationalists both here in the West, and in your beautiful country, at the expense of the rest of us ordinary people both here in the West, and in the Ukraine, and in fact ordinary people everywhere all over the world.”
