Singer Alexander Rosenbaum at a concert on May 9 in St. Petersburg spoke in defense of Zhenya Berkovich and Svetlana Petriychuk, accused of "justifying terrorism" because of the play "Finist the Clear Falcon".
Rosenbaum remembered the film by Vera Glagoleva "One War", which tells about women who gave birth to children from the Germans during the occupation. “I could never and none of you could have imagined that Vera would be pulled over for justifying fascism,” he said.
“I didn’t watch the performance Finist the Bright Falcon, but Svetlana Petriychuk and Zhenya Berkovich wrote about deceived Russian women, just deceived. I'm not talking about politics now, by no means. We understand that someone wanted to, but we are smart people, we have a smart state, we hope. Is it possible in shackles of two girls who wrote about unfortunate women? <…> And yet I want to express the hope that I am one of the people, one ordinary person, I also have an opinion. I think they went too far, it's time to turn on the back, ”said Rosenbaum.
On May 4, Berkovich and Petriychuk were detained in Moscow in connection with a criminal case on “justifying terrorism.” A denunciation of their play Finist Yasny Sokol was written by members of the National Liberation Movement of Russia (NOD). The production tells about women from Russia who decided to marry Islamists and leave for Syria, as a result of which they were recruited by militants. The authors of the denunciation complained, among other things, that during the performance the actors did not remind about the ban on ISIS in the Russian Federation. The premiere of the performance took place in 2020, it was awarded the Golden Mask theatrical award. Initially, both Berkovich and Petriychuk were released after interrogation, but almost immediately they were detained again, already in the status of suspects. On May 5, they were sent to a pre-trial detention center for two months.