Otoy, a Ukrainian rapper-turned-volunteer soldier, is putting the war into words and basslines, tapping out lyrics under Russian shelling on his phone.
From the battlefronts of Ukraine comes rap music — filled with the anger and indignation of a young generation that, once the fighting is done, will certainly never forget and may never forgive.
One of the ironies of the February 24 invasion launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin is that in ordering the destruction of Ukrainian towns and cities, he is fuelling one of the very things he wanted to extinguish: a rising tide of fierce Ukrainian nationalism, forged in the blood of tens of thousands of Ukrainian dead and the misery of millions who have lost loved ones, homes, livelihoods and peace.
Otoy’s lyrics, with choice expletives directed at Russia and stark descriptions of Russian war dead, speak from the heart — he lost his older brother, a soldier, in the siege of the Azovstal steel mill in the devastated port city of Mariupol.But they also give voice to the cold fury shared by many of his peers, now pouring out in song, in art and tattoos, online in hashtags proclaiming “death to the enemies” and memes targeting Putin, and in fundraising for the war effort.
“I hate them and, I’m sorry, it will never change,” she said. “I will explain it to my children and I hope that my children will explain to their children.” His older brother, Dmitry Lisen, is missing, believed dead in the bombed-out ruins of Mariupol’s Azovstal steelworks. He was a fighter with the Azov Regiment, among the units that clung doggedly to the surrounded plant for nearly three months, becoming an enduring symbol of Ukrainian resistance.to Azovstal’s defenders — rapping in English with the aim, he says, of reaching “people all around the world”.
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