1/ 🎹 Piano Extremist (AKA Піаніст Майдану)- is a Ukrainian pianist, composer and painter
🎵He captured attention of the whole world as a symbol of the Revolution of Dignity in 2014.
💔 How did his life unfold after the Revolution, and how to support him? - 🧵
2/ In 2014 @piano_extremist made his first performance on Khreshchatyk (in Kyiv, 🇺🇦) playing Ludovico Einaudi’s Nuvole Bianche, while wearing a balaclava and a bulletproof vest.
The video scored over 2m views on YouTube and became the musical symbol of the Maidan Revolution.
3/ In autumn 2014, travelling around 🇺🇦 (by then invaded by 🇷🇺) with “Dnipro-1” battalion, he did a tour under the motto “We'll protect those who protect us"
He conducted charitable street performances in over 50 cities in central & eastern Ukraine.
4/ Between 2014-2018, @Piano_Extremist performed live over 300 times all over Ukraine
In 2019, he had to stop performing due to an onset of a severe illness and focused on painting, which he initially took up as a hobby in between performances.
5/ Prior to the war, Piano Extremist had tragically lost his whole family (wife and child).
Lack of permanent housing + several cerebral contusions + stress accumulated since 2014, have led to mental health struggles that unfortunately resulted in multiple nervous breakdowns.
According to him, what's preventing him from suicide is the need to work on 2 books in which he wants to present his true & absurd story of the events he witnessed during the Revolution & during 8 years of the war.
7/ To this day, @piano_extremist avoids interviews, still hides his face, surname, & personal life.
He is our dear friend and we will be grateful for any support provided.
We can only add to this that the sun will rise in the west and set in the east sooner than we see russian “liberals” do their work.
❓Why?
❗️Because they are part of the same imperialist culture that pro-regime russians are.
Here’s an example of what we mean.
Ukrainians: - It’s NOT putin’s war. It’s russians committing #GenocideOfUkrainians every day for 270 days, after over 8 years (!) since the unprovoked invasion.
russian “dissidents”: - It’s not russians. it’s putin! 🤦♀️
2/9 All Ukrainians who came forward with their opinion against the system were severely punished.
Not all could be killed, exterminated by famines and deported.
For this reason, punitive psychiatry was invented: to teach (ru) "love the motherland"(/ru) and keep your head down.
🎙Those whose voice sounded stronger through the sphere of their activity, art, literature, culture could stand out and draw attention to themselves the most.
❗️To break them meant to intimidate everyone else.
We are grateful to @aprilsparkles1 for highlighting this important point.
Ukrainian people were outraged by Christopher Miller's appointment as Ukraine correspondent for @FT after he spent years spreading disinformation about us.
.@rynkrynk
"Spreading scary stories about Azov and turning them into a huge boogeyman for the entire world has helped 🇷🇺 propaganda AND put the defenders of Azovstal into huge danger and robbed them of the support they deserved"
📌 "We are talking dozen millions (!!!) of civilian people and the World who is still afraid to admit that this is pure genocide against Ukrainians." @brokenpixelua 1/
📌 "And a little reminder - russia is a terrorist state, most of russians are super happy about civilian people freezing and dying - they make a lot of jokes about it in their social media and tv-shows."