Ukrainian conductor Yuri Kerpatenko was shot dead by Russian soldiers “in his own house” in Kherson, a city in southern Ukraine that has been occupied since the conflict began, Ukraine’s culture ministry said on Saturday.
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This “brutal murder,” revealed by the media on Friday, was committed because “Kerpatenko refused to cooperate with the occupiers,” the ministry added in a press release.
He has worked at the Kherson Regional Philharmonic since 2000 and in 2004 became the conductor of the city’s Musical and Dramatic Theater, which goes by the name of Mykola Koulich, the same source said.
“Yuri Kerpatenko openly took a stand and refused to leave the occupied city of Kherson,” the culture ministry said.
“According to media reports, the occupiers and their staff of the Philharmonic Orchestra were planning a celebratory concert in Kherson on the occasion of the International Music Day on October 1,” the source said.
The Russians “wanted this concert to be a demonstration of the so-called “return to peaceful life” in Kherson. However, the conductor of the orchestra, Yuri Kerpatenko, categorically refused to cooperate with the occupiers,” the ministry said.
Russia announced on Thursday that it would organize the evacuation of the population of the Kherson region to its territory, claiming to be responding to a request from local occupation authorities threatened by the progress of the Ukrainian army’s counteroffensive.