LVIV, Ukraine — Slava Vakarchuk is used to filling stadiums. He’s the lead singer of Okean Elzy, Ukraine’s biggest rock band.
But on …
LVIV, Ukraine — Slava Vakarchuk is used to filling stadiums. He’s the lead singer of Okean Elzy, Ukraine’s biggest rock band. But on the day the war began, he was at home in the capital Kyiv. He woke up early, to news of Russian President Vladimir Putin announcing a «military operation» in Ukraine. «And the moment I read it — I mean, literally, the next second — I hear a big blow, probably five miles from my house,» Vakarchuk,46, recalls. He jumped into his car and made a big decision in that moment. «I started touring the country once again. But not with music,» he says. «I decided to go to the points that are in danger.» For the past three weeks, Vakarchuk has been driving back and forth into frontline cities where some of the worst fighting has been — Kharkiv, Zaphorizhzha, Odesa — delivering food and medicine. He’s also, in a way, delivering moral support to his countrymen, he says. «For example, you’re at a gas station and somebody sees you and wants to hug you, embrace you, cuddle you,» he told NPR in an interview in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. «It’s emotional. People need it.» Ukrainian musicians and artists are responding to war in lots of different ways.
