Ukraine’s culture ministry has put Italian singer Albano Carrisi, better known by his stage name Al Bano, on its list of individuals considered a threat to national security, Interfax reported on Monday.
There are 147 people currently on this list, with Al Bano occupying number 48 since last March 6th. The Apulian singer and Romina Power (ed, the musical duo and her ex-husband), were popular figures in the Soviet Union in the 1980s and 1990s. Albano was a vocal supporter of Vladimir Putin: in 2014, after a show held in Moscow, he defined the sanctions against Russia for its role in the Ukrainian crisis as “useless and harmful”, adding that “we must not shoot ourselves in the foot, otherwise we’ll lose our toes”. We must understand the soul of the Russian people, whose greatly admired Italy”. The Apulian singer also endorsed Putin’s foreign policy: “I have been in the USSR, today’s Russia is very different, you can see the change. Putin then blocked the war in Syria after what the Obama administration wanted to do”.
“I am not a terrorist, I’ll call the Ukrainian minister”
“I never said a word against Ukraine. Never even made an acknowledgement. It is unacceptable that I, who have always been singing peace, am now being treated as a terrorist. I have never owned weapons, not even mental ones,” Al Bano said of the matter. “I will immediately call the ambassador and the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture. I want to understand how my name ended up on the list. When I heard about it this morning I thought it was a joke, or a mistaken person”.
Given that his tours in Russia and his admiration for Putin may have pushed him onto the Ukrainian blacklist, Al Bano said: “What I have with Putin isn’t a friendship, we’re simply acquaintances, added to the fact that he is honorary president of the International Judo Federation and I am a global ambassador. I’ve sang for him but also for many other heads of state, and also for John Paul II. I am a man of peace and not of war”.
Al Banos said he last performed in Ukraine “about three or four years ago, and I went well”, adding that maybe “Ukraine no longer likes my songs. But the blacklist is too much”.
Actor Michele Placido was also blacklisted in 2018
The Italian actor and director Michele Placido also made the Ukrainian blacklist on December 10, 2018 at number 103 for praising Putin’s muscular foreign policy earlier in Moscow in 2015. He said his Orthodox Russia, “unlike the weak West, is a bulwark against Islam”. “Internally I can understand the contradictions, the criticisms, and above all of the opposition because the methods were probably not properly democratic, but in foreign policy it is the number one in Europe, and it’s more genuine than that of Merkel or the French,” he said.
Other notable artists to be denied entry visas to the Ukraine
Included in the long list of artists who are denied entry visas to Ukraine, published by the Ministry of Culture since August 2015, is French actor Gerard Depardieu and American actor Steven Seagal, both vocal fans of Vladimir Putin and Russian honorary citizens. Similarly, the ban affects Yuliya Samoilova, the Russian wheelchair-bound singer who was a Moscow candidate for Eurovision 2017, a show hosted in Ukraine, triggering new controversies between the two former brothers. The iconic Russian crooner and political figure dubbed “the Soviet Frank Sinatra” Yosip Kobzon, now a 77-year-old Duma deputy and his Serbian colleague Goran Bregovic, were also affected by the announcement. Many of the artists considered as threats to Ukrainian national security have performed in the Crimea or supported its annexation to Russia.
An original version of this article first appeared in Italian in La Stampa
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