Green Day Pulls Russia Show Over Ukraine Conflict

Punk rockers Green Day are cancelling an upcoming Moscow show because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Posting to their Instagram story Sunday (Feb. 27) Green Day writes: "“With heavy hearts, in light of current events we feel it is necessary to cancel our upcoming show in Moscow at Spartak Stadium” in a statement shared on their Instagram story. “We are aware that this moment is not about stadium rock shows, it’s much bigger than that. But we also know that rock and roll is forever and we feel confident there will be a time and a place for us to return in the future. Refunds available at the point of purchase. Stay safe.”

Variety is reporting that the concert was part of Green Day's Hella Mega Tour with Weezer and Fallout Boy.  Neither Weezer nor Fallout Boy have commented on the cancellation at the time of this writing.

Pop/alt act AJR also cancelled a show in Russia set for October, accusing the country of "criminal behavior" and asking people to share "accurate" info about the conflict.

Other rock and metal acts scheduled to play Moscow in the coming months:  Bring Me the Horizon is scheduled for April and Judas Priest has one in May.  Other concerts scheduled include Disclosure, Khalid, OneRepublic, Yungblud, Girl in Red, Denzel Curry and OneRepublic.

But looking past the spring, Variety says there is a "very busy" Russian concert season with the "alt-rock-leaning Bol festival and two Park Live festivals (the latter featuring the Killers, Gorillaz, My Chemical Romance, Iggy Pop and many others) along with summer dates by Iron Maiden, Deep Purple, Imagine Dragons, Bjork, Eric Clapton and others."

Russian musicians and previous state censorship targets Pussy Riot are selling NFTs to raise funds for Ukrainian civilian groups caught in the invasion.