Russian troops kill Ukrainian conductor after refusing to cooperate

Russian soldiers have shot dead Ukrainian conductor Yuriy Kerpatenko in his home in Kherson after he refused to take part in a concert in the occupied city, Classic FM reports. The concert on 1 October was intended to feature the Gileya chamber orchestra, of which Kerpatenko was the principal conductor. “The tragic irony of this is that talk about the superiority of Russian culture, its humanism. And here they murdered someone who is actually bringing beauty to people’s lives. It is sickening" - said the conductor Semyon Bychkov from Paris, where he was performing as music director of the Czech Philharmonic. The St Petersburg-born conductor left Russia as a young man in the 1970s. Kherson is a port city in Ukraine, and was the first to fall to Russian troops at the beginning of the war. Kerpatenko was one of the city’s residents who refused to leave. From February to May 2022, the conductor posted public messages on his Facebook profile, speaking out against the Russian invasion.