U2’s frontman Bono and guitarist The Edge made a surprise visit to Kyiv on Sunday to perform a 40-minute concert at a subway station converted into a shelter from Russian attacks. After the two members of the Irish rock band listed some of the many cities where U2 has performed, Bono said, “We’d like you to know ... there is nowhere in the whole world that we would rather be than in the great city of Kyiv.”
“Your president leads the world in the cause of freedom right now … the people of Ukraine are not just fighting for your own freedom, you’re fighting for all of us who love freedom,” Bono told a crowd of about 100 people inside the underground Khreshchatyk metro station.
Bono then sang along with Taras Topolya, lead singer of the popular Ukrainian band Antytila, performing “Stand By Ukraine,” an adapted version of the Ben E. King classic “Stand By Me.”
Topolya’s wife and children fled Ukraine at the outbreak of the war, but he remained behind to volunteer as a paramedic in the Ukrainian army. Other members of Antytila, who performed at the concert, also are serving in the army.
During the concert, Bono and The Edge performed such U2 classics as “Sunday Bloody Sunday” about the troubles in Northern Ireland, “With or Without You,” and “Desire,” according to the BBC.
Topolya appealed to President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to help extract the remaining defenders of Mariupol where Ukrainian forces in the Azovstal steel plant are under constant attack from Russian forces. ”It’s an opportunity for us to to sing with legends and, of course, it’s a huge opportunity for us to tell the world the truth about our war,” he said.
Russian forces have been pushed back from the Ukrainian capital, but the city is still being hit by occasional missile attacks. On Sunday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited Kyiv to meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and raise the flag over the reopened Canadian Embassy, another sign that the Ukrainian capital is under less immediate threat from the Russian invaders.
Bono said he had accepted an invitation from Zelenskyy to perform in Kyiv as “a show of Solidarity with the Ukrainian people.” He said the band had met Zelenskyy before he became president, and after the war broke out they sent him a recording of a poem set to music. That poem, which references St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland, was read aloud at a White House luncheon marking St. Patrick’s Day by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The poem closes with the lines: “Ireland’s sorrow and pain/is now the Ukraine/And St. Patrick’s name now Zelenskyy.”
After the subway concert, Bono and The Edge visited two towns near Kyiv that had been devastated by Russian forces. In Borodyanka, Bono told Britain’s Sky News: "You can't ever really have a sense of what these people have been through," even though the evidence around was "stark."
In an apparent reference to Putin, the U2 frontman said the conflict was "one man's war, really." He said that "younger people in Russia will know what's going on" and that he trusts "in the younger people in Russia to throw this man" out of office.
The Edge (David Howell Evans), standing alongside Bono, told reporters: "Musicians and poets and writers do have a part to play. We work with our music and our words.
"We're not politicians. But we can speak to the horror of what we're standing in the midst of, and just say 'it's wrong'. So we're here to bear witness to it."
Afterward, the musicians visited a church in Bucha, where a mass grave was found in March after Russian troops withdrew from the town.