Fred Durst, the lead singer of U.S.rock band Limp Bizkit, has been banned from entering Ukraine for five years.
Olena Gitlyanska, spokesperson of the Security Service of Ukraine spokesperson told BBC Ukraine on Dec.21 that Durst had been banned overstate security concerns.
The U.S. rocker is known to support Russia’s annexation of Crimea. At a show in the Russian city Voronezh in early November he held up a banner reading “Crimea is Russia.”
In interviews with the Russian media, Durst, who is married to a Ukrainian woman from Crimea, said that he wanted to move to Russian-occupied Crimea and produce film and TV content promoting Russia there.
However, in an official statement published on Durst’s official page in Vkontakte on Dec. 21, the singer said he had never asked for Russian citizenship.
“I am not mad at the ignorant gesture made about me by ‘someone’ in Ukraine’s government,’” he wrote. “I actually feel sad that not only are their facts completely wrong, but they are wasting so much time and energy focusing on things that do not matter when they can clearly be attending to other more serious matters.”
Russian newspaper Izvestia reported in October that Durst had sent an official letter to the Russian-backed Crimean authorities, in which he said that he was interested in obtaining a Russian passport and moving to Crimea for six months to make films and TV series that would promote Russia among other Western celebrities.
According to quotes from the letter published in Izvestia, Durst wrote that he couldn’t drop his U.S. citizenship because his son lives in Los Angeles.
Durst denied the report in his Vkontakte statement.
“I did not ask to live in Crimea or for citizenship there. Crimea actually asked me, and I declined. It’s too sensitive a matter right now,” he wrote. “I have many friends and family in Ukraine, and Russia. I have respect and love for them both.”
Durst married Kseniya Beryazina, a Ukrainian make-up artist from Crimea, in 2012. Beryazina’s family has since left Crimea and moved to St. Petersburg in Russia.
Kyiv Post staff writer Veronika Melkozerova can be reached at [email protected]
