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Artist News
Elton John again calls on Vladimir Putin to meet with him
By Andy Malt | Published on Monday 14 September 2015
Elton John has again said that he would like to meet with Russian president Vladimir Putin to discuss gay rights in the country.
“I’d love to meet him and sit down with him and talk to him”, he said, speaking to BBC News. “It’s probably pie in the sky … but at least if I meet him and say, ‘Come on, let’s have a cup of tea and talk about this…’ He may laugh behind my back when he shuts the door and call me an absolute idiot, but at least I can have a conscience to say I tried”.
John made the comments while in Ukraine, where he has been speaking to President Petro Poroshenko and various business leaders about LGBT rights, asking for improvements in that country too.
The singer previously put forward the idea of a meeting with Putin ahead of a show in St Petersburg last year. Putin’s stance on gay rights has become increasingly controversial in recent years, following the introduction of laws banning the ‘promotion of homosexual propaganda’. The promoter of a Lady Gaga show in 2013 was fined, after the musician was deemed to have broken these laws.
As for what he’d say to Putin, should he ever get the chance to speak to him, John said: “I’d say, ‘Come on, gay people are not the problem. The world faces much bigger problems than gay people. Be accepting, and let’s all pull together and try to solve the problems of the world. Don’t isolate and be prejudiced against gay people'”.
