who s died at the age of 90. ms lynn enjoyed a successful, six decade long career. now on bbc news, it s hardtalk with zeinab badawi. welcome to hardtalk, with me, zeinab badawi. as the war in ukraine rages on, we speak to a russian rock legend whose life and career have mirrored his motherland s journey from the soviet era, through the break up of the soviet union, to putin s authoritarian state. my guest is boris grebenshchikov. he last played in russia the day before putin invaded ukraine in february, and is now living in london. bg, as he s known to his fans, risks prosecution for his anti war comments if he returns to russia. the role cultural icons have to play in the politics of protests is a well trodden one, but do their voices have any impact inside russia? boris grebenshchikov, welcome to hardtalk. thanks for having me. all right, so you last performed in russia just six hours before putin invaded ukraine. you say you had a sense of foreboding that something monume
ukraine in february, and is now living in london. bg, as he is known to his fans, risks prosecution for his anti war comments if he returns to russia. the role cultural icons have to play in the politics of protests is a well trodden one, but do their voices have any impact inside russia? boris grebenshchikov, welcome to hardtalk. thanks for having me. all right, so you last performed in russia just six hours before putin invaded ukraine. you say you had a sense of foreboding that something monumental was going to happen. what did you think was going to occur? you know, we played a concert on the night before the invasion, and i had this weird feeling that i m playing in hamburg in 1939. so i knew that something really bad is coming. i couldn t predict the war, but, you know, it felt bad. and now, when you see ukrainian cities, where you performed, either being destroyed, some of the very theatres where you actually played, and also places like kherson, one of the four provin
Maybe they don t know what a chief of staff s job is. do they see this as, okay, this was what the president was focused on, this is what the chief of staff does. so wasn t he doing that in his capacity? is that relevant? i think it is relevant in the way that shan described. it s relevant to a jury, who might be thinking, hey, this guy was just following orders. he didn t know. but that s not what the standard is he s facing right now. he s trying to convince a judge that he was within the legal scope of his authority as chief of staff. even though it s a low bar, and most high ranking federal officials are successfully invoke things like removal and dismissal on immunity grounds, i m not so sure he s going to be successful. one of the other things that meadows said was one of my jobs was trying to be gate keeper. that was a lot more challenging with president trump. you play offense and defense. i found myself playing defense a whole lot. that probably is one of the
His official capacity and not in the politics, which is what he argued in court yesterday? there are two different perspectives here. one, mark meadows, everything the president told him to do, that was his job and he was acting within the scope of his job, but that s not necessarily the way a judge is going to interpret what he was doing under color of authority. technically, color of authority means the acts that you undertook that were authorized by the statutes or the constitution that gives you the authority you have. so he is on shaky ground in terms of whether or not this judge is going to go along with his incredibly broad interpretation of his duties, or whether he s going to draw lines around things like the hatch act, no, you do these things as a federal official and you do other things that were political. they don t mix, therefore, no removal. so mark meadows was donald
From german culture? he said, i am german culture. german culture is where i am. so i feel the same about russia. my russia is with me. and all the people who emigrated at the moment, they bring their own russia with them. a few years ago, when you were asked in an interview about your feelings of russian ness, you said, i speak the russian language, i write in russian and work mostly for those who choose russian as their main language of communication and self expression. many ukrainians have russian as their mother tongue. so how are you going to interpret this now, with these ukrainians who have russian as their first language and your sense of feeling that russian ness is somehow tied up with the language? that s not going to be sustainable any more, is it? well, i think russian language will not change because of the people who are right now sitting in the kremlin. russian culture is one thing, the politics is another thing they don t mix.