The leader of the DDT group, Yuri Shevchuk, transferred all personal fees for the last 10 concerts to refugees who were forced to leave Ukraine due to the Russian invasion. He spoke about this in an interview with journalist Katerina Gordeeva on her YouTube channel.
“My children are adults already, I don’t need so much finance. I personally have never taken my fee for any concert. I transferred all the money to refugees from Ukraine. People are suffering, even those who were forcibly evicted before the war, they live somewhere in hostels.”
Earlier in Russia, another concert of the DDT group was postponed – this time in Orenburg – from the fall of 2022 to February 2023. Also from the site of the Voronezh rock festival "Chernozem", which will be held in August this year, information about the group's performance has disappeared. Before that, the DDT concert, which was supposed to take place in Moscow on June 10, was postponed for a year.
On May 18, Shevchuk, during a concert in Ufa, delivered a speech: “Motherland, friends, this is not the president’s ass, which must be procrastinated and kissed all the time. Motherland is a beggar grandmother at the station selling potatoes. This is the motherland." After the speech, the security forces came backstage and did not let Shevchuk go for two hours. As a result of the conversation, a protocol was drawn up against the musician under Part 1 of Art. 20.3.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation – on discrediting the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Shevchuk himself commented on the incident with the words: “Come on, why are you soaring?! The concert was wonderful. But situations are different."
However, the court returned the Shevchuk case to the police to eliminate the shortcomings. According to the joint press service of the courts of St. Petersburg, “the protocol does not describe the event of the offense, there is no indication of what exactly the public calls to prevent the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in order to protect the interests of the Russian Federation and its citizens were expressed in.”
Shevchuk later stated that the group was not going to give up concerts in Russia: “We are absolutely ready for concerts, we have an awesome new program, we are not going to refuse concerts in Russia – here world concerts are needed more than in Berlin, London or anywhere or else."