Diesel from Green Grey called Farion a "freak" and explained why he has not yet switched to Ukrainian

The founder and guitarist of the famous Ukrainian rock band Green Grey, Andriy Yatsenko, better known by his pseudonym Diesel, has not switched to Ukrainian in public, unlike most of his colleagues. The musician, who joined the Ukrainian Armed Forces at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, admits that he is trying to start speaking his native language, but he still has difficulty building sentences and logical chains.

At the same time, Diesel surprised us by admitting that he has been speaking Ukrainian with his wife at home for the past 15 years. The rocker spoke about the language issue, as well as the scandalous statements of former Ukrainian MP and linguist Iryna Farion, in an interview with Slava Demin for his YouTube channel of the same name.

"I try, to be honest. But already on the second question, I switch to Russian to explain my thoughts clearly. That is, the form of presentation, apparently, and the construction of sentences that I am used to in my head, it does not quite fit the Ukrainian language. So I am relearning how to build logical chains in Ukrainian, not the language itself. I know Ukrainian well," commented Diesel.

When the interviewer asked how he writes songs in this case, the artist replied that he composes music, and his guitar "always plays in Ukrainian." Diesel doesn't touch the lyrics, except to give him some ideas. Demin noted that the rocker is his second guest in almost two years to speak Russian. The first was a TV presenter from Russia, Tatiana Lazareva.

Against this background, the host asked what Diesel thought about Irina Farion's scandalous statements. The philologist said that she could not consider Russian-speaking defenders of Ukraine to be Ukrainians, which caused a flurry of indignation online. The 53-year-old musician, who signed a contract with the Armed Forces of Ukraine in 2022, categorically condemns the words of the former Lviv Polytechnic teacher.

"For the last two or three weeks, several journalists from different publications have been calling me, all trying to get a comment on Farion... We are changing. Of course, the war itself has changed us all. Thoughts, plans, and the form of presentation before the war were completely different. And Farion looked like a freak in those years... Of course, I am against such radicalism. What can I say more than what the guys from Azov or the volunteers say? There is nothing to add here. I'm glad that they are finally starting to put an end to such cases. Because you can't achieve anything but dividing the country into two parts with these actions," Diesel said.

At the same time, the musician has one person with whom he has been communicating in Ukrainian for 15 years. It is his wife.

"In everyday life, I speak Ukrainian with my wife. Both she and I are Russian speakers. We've been living together for about 20 years, and for about 15 years now we've been speaking Ukrainian to each other when we're alone. It's so cool, so easy. In everyday life, Ukrainian is better for communication than Russian. But when I go out or meet people, for some reason I can't switch, I can't express myself," commented the Green Grey frontman.

Last April, Diesel signed a contract with the Mriya battalion. Read more about it in the article.

As OBOZ.UA previously wrote, the famous Ukrainian theater and film actor Bohdan Beniuk defended Iryna Farion, who found herself at the epicenter of the language scandal. The actor believes that the former lecturer at Lviv Polytechnic aptly spoke about the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine, which he himself considers "invaders."

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