From the basement in Kharkiv: Joko & Klaas bring the Ukrainian band Selo i Ludy into the living room

In the course of their TV show “Joko & Klaas versus ProSieben”, the two entertainers Joko Winterscheidt and Klaas Heufer-Umlauf have time and again the opportunity to fill 15 minutes of free broadcasting time. What comes out of it is very different. Sometimes the two just fool around, sometimes they turn their attention to social grievances. This time it was about a topic that is currently omnipresent, but sometimes difficult to grasp: the war in Ukraine.

Straight from the basement in Kharkiv

In doing so, Joko & Klaas did not make the mistake of putting themselves in the center of attention, but left the stage to others: the members of the Ukrainian folklore pop band Selo i Ludy, who, together with many others, had been living in a basement in the frontline city of Kharkiv in Fear of the Russian bombs endures. About 1600 kilometers from Berlin, the band played a few songs, accompanied visually by images from the sparsely furnished bunker in the middle of the war zone.

Alexander, the band’s lead singer, pauses between songs to talk about the situation in Kharkiv, which so many in Germany seemed completely unimaginable not long ago. You yourself would have seen a lot of things coming a long time ago, for safety reasons you chose the basement as a rehearsal room before the war: “We were pretty sure how everything would develop here.”

Selo i Ludy: One day live in Germany?

Towards the end, Alexander promises that he and his band will try to stay alive, also to come to Germany one day and play live here. After the war. “We’ll do our best to make it happen.” And then the band plays “Space Oddity’ by David Bowie before the fifteen minutes are up and the hashtag #StandWithUkraine appears in white letters on a black background. This is how an emotional television moment ends, which manages to make Ukraine and its inhabitants appear very close.

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