From BZ
“Not only can I make camouflage nets, everyone else can too. I have a superpower, a responsibility: I can stand on a stage with a microphone and people will listen to me,” says Ukrainian rapper Alyona Alyona in “Zeit Campus” about the war in her home country and her role as unofficial ambassador .
Alyona Alyona, who grew up as Alyona Sawranenko in a small town near Kyiv, is one of the biggest pop stars in Ukraine. Since the beginning of the war, the rapper has seen herself as a social media warrior.
“I’ve shared about every fundraiser and request for any kind of relief shipment on my stories. After the first week of the war, my phone reminded me: Alyona, you have an average of ten hours of screen time per day.”
Alyona Alyona actually wanted to use the year 2022 to organize her life after three intensive years: “I had big plans that were over before the sun rose again.”
The beginning of the war caught the award-winning musician unprepared: “I regret that I never asked my friends from eastern Ukraine, where there has been a war since 2014: How is it actually, war?” Before their first performances since the Russian invasion She asked herself, “Can I really put on a show while back home people are being shredded and mutilated, parents are losing their children?”
At the same time, she states that she has never seen her country and the diaspora so united: “The war shows that nothing is impossible, for better or for worse. And he makes it clear to us what is important and what is not.”
She explains: “We were a generation for which consumption and luxury were extremely important. That will change.” Alyona Alyona will no longer work with Russians. “There are still a few good people in Russia, but too few. Many have fled. The rest are hypnotized by Putin’s propaganda.” That’s why she doesn’t address her messages to the Russian people.
The 31-year-old appeals: “What is this shitty war about? Aren’t we human, can’t we solve problems with words?”
