U2 paid tribute to Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who was imprisoned in a Russian penal colony where he died suddenly on Friday. On Saturday, during U2’s residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas, Bono addressed the crowd before their performance of Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” a staple during their residency.
As fan video footage showed, Bono began by speaking about busking in a Kyiv subway in Ukraine a couple of months before Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded the country. “Edge and I got to stand with some of the people in Ukraine as they stood in that train station, which was a converted bomb shelter. We got to stand with some of the people of Ukraine as they waited for the train to arrive with the rest of the free world on it.” He added: “They’re still waiting for some of that train to arrive. America, you’re so generous,” he said. “But let’s get these people what they need.”
“Next week it’ll be two years since Putin invaded and tried to destroy the hard-won freedoms” of the Ukrainian people, Bono said. “Next it’ll be Poland, next it’ll be Lithuania, East Germany — who knows where this man will or won’t go.