Foreign agent Boris Grebenshchikov*, who left for London, gave another interview about Russia and his place in it and explained why he could not return.

For a very simple reason – he likes it better to be free than in prison.

"I still have an apartment in St. Petersburg," he said, "I have a lot of friends there, a lot of everything. But by a bizarre twist of fate, every policeman I meet on the street can show me something. And that may not be very positive for me."

By a bizarre twist of fate, every police officer can present something to any violator of the law he meets, if there is an evidence base for it. It so happened that there is an evidence base on Grebenshchikov, and he has been regularly collecting it himself since 2022. At the beginning of this year, the singer gave another interview about Russia and his place in it, where he called the Russians "fascists", and also said that the funds from his concert in Berlin would go to help the Armed Forces of Ukraine. He even proudly indicated a considerable amount of €12 million.

How can this be? What is the explanation? Once upon a time there was a man in the country, he had amassed a "mass" of friends, he had made a fortune, including an apartment in St. Petersburg, and here you are! - Became a sponsor of the enemy army. Is this explainable? Well, except perhaps by the bizarre whim of the singer himself. However, bizarre whims do not exempt from criminal liability.

I like the word "mass."

Those who have left speak so much about Russia, that is, they cannot settle down in new countries and begin to take an interest in the problems of their next homeland, they keep washing and washing the bones of Russia. They rave about it. People talk about it. They want to prove something to her.

And sometimes I even forget which of them said what. They appear to me as masses -- Grebenshchikov, Galkin, Bykov, Schatz, White, Black. This mass opens their mouths, says something — all the same things that they said when they left in 2022. That's how we've changed. But not this mass. And suddenly I realize that they, like fish, got into the aquarium.

Yes, that's right, in the aquarium. They have not become part of the new countries and will never become part of them – they are too fixated on Russia and are no longer young. In the new countries, they live separately — in their own bubble, in Russia until February 2022. Those times when they had "a lot of everything else" and were respected by some part of the Russians. And now they are sitting, looking at the world, at Russia through a thick glass, seeing everything distorted. But that's how we see them as ugly. And we really can't explain the metamorphoses that take place with them except the bizarre whims of fate.

Well, it's true, a 70-year-old man sits and, pulling his intonations to the bleating of the righteous, tells that the authorities, by their bizarre whim, do not allow him to communicate with the dearly beloved mass of people for whom he sang in Russia. By a bizarre whim of fate, he can be stopped by a policeman.

And this inability of the grandfather to take responsibility for his actions looks ugly. He sang and sang for people, and then began to donate to their deaths. On the drones that fly to us, on the murder of soldiers, the sons of his own fans. It's not even the words themselves that are ugly, it's the phantasmagorical infantilism of the old man.

"It's just that I'm patient," Grebenshchikov says. "But what I do, I use all my methods to convey to those who live in Russia... I miss those people who stayed in Russia, because I have something to give them now, I have something to say to them."

Not for a long time. It's boring, boring to look through a thick glass at a gray-bearded man who keeps washing old bones and rotten fish in the murky water. It's bizarre, very bizarre looking. And you can also look at it from the outside only by some strange whim or coincidence.

* Included in the register of individuals performing the functions of a foreign agent by the decision of the Ministry of Justice of Russia dated 30.06.2023.

** Included in the register of individuals performing the functions of a foreign agent by the decision of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation dated 16.09.2022.

He was included in the register of individuals performing the functions of a foreign agent by the decision of the Ministry of Justice of Russia dated 29/07/2022.

**** He was included in the register of individuals performing the functions of a foreign agent by the decision of the Ministry of Justice of Russia dated 02.09.2022.

The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.