[Warning: Potentially Triggering Content] A popular Russian rapper is dead after refusing to fight in his country’s ongoing war against Ukraine. Walkie, a well-known Russian rapper whose real name was Ivan Vitalievich Petunin, died on Friday in the city of Krasnodar, according to media reports.
The man, who was 27 years old at the time of his death, reportedly died by suicide. Media reports allege he jumped from a high-rise building in the Russian city, which is very near the Black Sea between the nations of Ukraine and Georgia. Related: Russian Athletes Protested Putin’s Invasion Of Ukraine — Why That’s So Important! According to DailyMail.com, Walkie published a video on Telegram at the time of his death.
In it, he informed his fans he’d been drafted into the Russian military to fight in the ongoing Ukrainian conflict. Speaking in Russian, he said that he could not “take the sin of murder on my soul” amid the geopolitical escalation led by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Walkie was evidently one of 300,000 Russian citizens who had been recently drafted by Putin to fight in the war. The outlet reports he had already served in the Russian Army as a younger man and “hated his previous experience so much that he tried to avoid re-enlistment on medical grounds.” That avoidance attempt apparently did not work, though.
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