"Kobzon spoke Ukrainian before his death". The wife of a Kyiv comrade of the "DPR hero" revealed unexpected details about his life

Legendary Ukrainian composer Ihor Poklad was friends for more than 50 years with Russian singer Yosyp Kobzon, who was born and raised in Ukraine but staunchly supported the Kremlin's aggressive policies. However, in his dying moments, the "hero of the DPR" suddenly began to communicate with his family in Ukrainian.

Svitlana Poklad, Ihor Poklad's wife, told this in an interview with OBOZ.UA. According to her, the Ukrainian composer himself stopped all communication with his friend when he began to publicly oppose Ukraine.

"My husband had been friends with Kobzon for more than fifty years," says Svitlana, "and when he had a brain injury, he stopped communicating with him. Iosyp went crazy, that's for sure. The journalist Dmytro Gordon told us how he once spent an hour and a half trying to put into his head what was really happening in Ukraine. He said: "He listened, never interrupted. And then, when he was done, he said: "Wow, Dima, you've been brainwashed."

"You know, there was no one to talk to, no one to tell," Svitlana continues, "By the way, his family admitted that when he was dying, he was dreaming in Ukrainian. And he spoke to them in Ukrainian while he was unconscious. We also know this from Gordon. In recent years, Ihor Dmytrovych has not spoken to Iosyp. When he learned about his position, that was it. But Kobzon used to visit us at home when he came to Kyiv. We used to meet in a restaurant and talk. It was like that... Well, that's life. I don't throw away the photos I took with him because I'm against destroying memory."

The singer Yosyp Kobzon is from the town of Chasiv Yar in Donetsk Oblast, not far from Bakhmut. In Soviet times, he made a rapid career as a pop singer. He was a People's Artist of the USSR. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he was several times elected to the State Duma of Russia from the ruling United Russia party. He was awarded the title of People's Artist of Ukraine (by Leonid Kravchuk). In addition, he was an honorary resident of several Ukrainian cities, including Dnipro, Poltava, and Donetsk, where a monument to him was erected.

From the very beginning of Euromaidan, Kobzon spoke out against the Ukrainian protests: "What happened in Ukraine is hard to understand. Why didn't they stop the construction of these tent cities and the fermentation of minds for a long time after the Maidan began?" Later, he publicly supported the annexation of Crimea. Since the beginning of the hostilities in Donbas, he has repeatedly performed in the so-called DPR and LPR, and in 2015, Oleksandr Zakharchenko awarded him the title of "hero of the DPR." Later, the singer received the "titles" of "People's Artist", "Honorary Citizen of the DPR" and "People's Artist of the LPR". Because of this, he was banned from entering Ukraine. In addition, Kobzon was deprived of all the titles of honorary citizen, as well as state awards, including the title of People's Artist of Ukraine.

Read the full interview with Svitlana Poklad on OBOZ.UA tomorrow, February 21.