Features
Not Best City For Festival
The organisers of this year’s Best City Festival in Ukraine must have soon realised Dnipropetrovsk wasn’t the best city to hold it, as the country came to the brink of civil war.
Photo: AP Photo / Sergei Chuzavkov
People gather for a rally in Independence Square in Kiev, Ukraine, June 29. Hundreds of people have come on Sunday morning to the presidential administration to demand a stop to the cease fire on the eastern part of Ukraine.
Dnipropetrovsk was once one of the key centres of the old Soviet Union’s nuclear, arms, and space industries and remains one of the country’s major centres of business and politics. In the current political climate it’s unlikely Best City could have fulfilled its boast of being the place where people will be able “to break away from daily routine and plunge into the atmosphere of crazy drive and energy.”
Six weeks ago, rather than have the event run the risk of being a flashpoint for trouble, the organisers decided to pull the plug.
“Nowadays in Ukraine there is a political and economic situation, when almost all music festivals and events are canceled,” said Best City chief Konstantin Dudko.
At the time of cancellation, Finnish rock band HIM was the only international act confirmed for the June 27-29 event.
Last year the festival on the city’s Novoselytsya Recreation Park, which has grown from 15,000 per day to 25,000 people per day in the two years since it’s been founded, was up for a European Festival Award.