American alt-rock band The Killers apologized on Wednesday for bringing a Russian fan on stage at a concert in the Black Sea resort town of Batumi, Georgia.
The people of Georgia strongly support Ukraine against the Russian invasion, having dealt with uninvited Russian guests themselves in 2008.
“Good people of Georgia, it was never our intention to offend anyone!” The Killers said in a statement on Wednesday.
“We recognize that a comment, meant to suggest that all of The Killers’ audience and fans are ‘brothers and sisters,’ could be misconstrued. We did not mean to upset anyone and we apologize. We stand with you and hope to return soon,” the band said.
The incident occurred near the end of The Killers’ set on Tuesday night in Batumi when the band invited a member of the audience onstage to play the drums during the song “For Reasons Unknown.” As The Killers explained in its Wednesday statement, this is a “longstanding tradition” during live performances.
The fan chosen to play the drums turned out to be a Russian, a detail frontman Brandon Flowers pointed out to the crowd.
“We don’t know the etiquette of this land, but this guy’s a Russian. You okay with a Russian coming up here? I’m alright with it,” Flowers told his audience.
It turned out that Georgians might be big fans of The Killers, but they are less fond of the Russian killers hard at work in neighboring Ukraine:
Part of the audience left concert of @thekillers at the Black Sea Arena in Georgia in protest after amid booing the group’s frontman who invited a Russian drummer to the stage and said everyone are “brothers and sisters” pic.twitter.com/mhtklWIOKf
— Formula NEWS | English (@FormulaGe) August 15, 2023
Flowers was visibly dismayed by the boos and walkouts, telling the audience that his band wanted to spread a message of unity.
“You can’t recognize if someone’s your brother? He’s not your brother? We all separate on the borders of our countries?” he asked.
“One of the things we have come to appreciate about being in this band is it brings people together,” he said. “I don’t want it to turn ugly. I see you as my brother and my sisters.”
“This is Georgia,” someone in the crowd shouted back at him.
As the BBC pointed out on Wednesday, instructing Georgians to see Russians as their brothers and sisters was especially problematic because Russian forces still occupy about a fifth of Georgia after the 2008 invasion.
Furthermore, a large number of Russians fleeing Vladimir Putin’s brutal regime have chosen to resettle in Georgia, especially in the capital of Tbilisi. The newcomers have not been getting along terribly well with the locals, particularly young Georgians with no memory of the Soviet Union who find the Russians arrogant and “colonial.”
“We find it really offensive when they are here having a good time. Every time we hear them having loud conversations in Russian, we just want to throw them into the river. We don’t do that, but that’s what we’re doing in our hearts,” a Georgian bar owner told the UK Guardian in May.
There is also some distance between the Georgian people and the government of Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili and his Georgian Dream party on the topic of Ukraine. Garibashvili mildly criticized the invasion of Ukraine but refused to join international sanctions against Russia, claiming it would violate Georgia’s “national interests” to do so.
Garibashvili’s government wants to rebuild relations with Russia and increasingly resents pressure from the U.S. and Europe to take a stronger stand against the invasion of Ukraine. Meanwhile, about 89 percent of the Georgian public wants to join the European Union, and 62 percent think their country is moving in the wrong direction.
Tbilisi radio station owner Ramaz Samkharadze told the BBC he had removed all of The Killers’ songs from his playlist as a “gesture of support” to those offended by the Tuesday night concert.
The Killers have stirred up controversy before. Flowers’ stated mission of “bringing people together” was not much in evidence when the band released its 2019 song “Land of the Free,” a scathing attack on the Second Amendment and border security. The entire point of the song was that no one with an ounce of compassion could possibly disagree with gun control or open borders in good faith.
In 2020, the band mocked concerns about voter fraud with a tweet that compared its failure to be nominated for a Grammy to the presidential election: “OBSERVERS WERE NOT ALLOWED INTO THE COUNTING ROOMS. WE WON THE GRAMMYS, GOT LOADS OF LEGAL VOTES. BAD THINGS HAPPENED WHICH OUR OBSERVERS WERE NOT ALLOWED TO SEE.”