U2 singer Bono paid tribute Saturday night to recently deceased Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny during his concert at The Sphere in Las Vegas. The frontman got the crowd to chant Navalny’s name as a memorial to the dissident’s struggle against the Russian establishment.
In a long preamble to a cover rendition of Crowded House’s Don’t Dream It’s Over, Bono spoke of the struggle for freedom and the importance of standing up for it. His remarks on Navalny start at the 2:35 mark in the video above.
“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. To these people, freedom is not just a word in a song. For these people freedom is the most important word in the world — so important that Ukrainians are fighting and dying for it. And it’s so important that Alexei Navalny chose to give his up.