Actor Gérard Depardieu on Thursday denounced Vladimir Poutine’s “crazy and unacceptable excesses”, announcing that all of the proceeds from his three concerts scheduled for the beginning of April at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées “will go to the Ukrainian victims”.
“The Russian people are not responsible”
“The Russian people are not responsible for the crazy and unacceptable excesses of their leaders like Vladimir Putin,” the star, who had praised the Russian leader in the past, said in a statement. He is due to perform from April 1 to 3 at the TCE in Paris, where he will sing songs by Barbara, of whom he was a close friend. “All of the proceeds from the three concerts I give at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (…) will go to the Ukrainian victims of this tragic fratricidal war,” added the actor, in a press release sent to AFP on Thursday.
“I have always had a singular penchant for the Russian people so well described by Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Gogol, Pasternak and so many other artists… Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich”, he also underlined. On March 1, Gérard Depardieu had already called for “stop arms and negotiate”, on the sixth day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “Russia and Ukraine have always been brotherly countries. I am against this fratricidal war. I say: ‘Stop arms and negotiate!'”, he said.
Franco-Russian since January 2013
The sacred monster of French cinema, who has French and Russian nationalities, obtained a Russian passport in January 2013, against a background of disagreement with the tax policy of President François Hollande. “I find it normal to pay, but not to idiots who think they are doing good,” he said in 2014 to the weekly Point. Since then, Gérard Depardieu has never ceased to praise his new homeland, Russia, a “great democracy”, and to praise Vladimir Putin, whom he notably compared to Pope John Paul II.