All participants of “Bi-2” flew out of Thailand

Six members of the Bi-2 group, who were detained in Thailand, were able to fly to Israel today. The group’s lawyer reported this to Mediazona.

The seventh musician - soloist Egor "Leva" Bortnik - flew to Israel yesterday.

Today the musicians were able to fly out of Thailand after a meeting between the Israeli and Australian consuls with the Thai Foreign Ministry.

“There was also supposed to be a meeting with the Russian consul. It is unclear whether they dated together or separately. Rather separately. The meeting lasted several hours. Representatives of the group did not participate in it,” the group’s lawyer told Mediazona.

As a result, it was decided that all the musicians could fly to Tel Aviv: “Tickets were purchased, El Al airline helped a lot. The musicians were then taken to the immigration office at the airport, registered, given passports and boarded.”

Seven members of the Bi-2 group were detained after a concert on the island of Phuket on January 24, citing the lack of permission to work in the country.

Representatives of the group explained the situation as an error in the preparation of documents by the organizers. The musicians were fined. Six of them are being held in Bangkok in an 80-person cell at an immigration detention center.

to Israel . was able to fly The day before , one of the frontmen of the Bi-2 group, Yegor “Leva” Bortnik (he only has Israeli citizenship),

Three members of the group have only Russian passports, and, as their lawyer noted, Russia insists that they fly directly to their country of citizenship. The rest have Israeli citizenship. The second frontman of Bi-2, Alexander “Shura” Uman, also has an Australian passport - like Bortnik, he is not a citizen of Russia.

Representatives of the group said that after the visit of high-ranking Russian diplomats, the Thai authorities abandoned the agreement to deport three musicians with Russian and Israeli citizenship to Israel.

A Bi-2 lawyer told Mediazona that, according to Thai police, Russian consulate officials constantly call them and “monitor every step” that concerns the deportation of members of the group, which previously openly opposed the war in Ukraine.

Bi-2 are not the first Russian artists with an anti-war stance to encounter problems when organizing performances in Thailand. were cancelled Previously, performances by comedians Ruslan Bely and Maxim Galkin . The organizer of the Bi-2 concert clarified that this has been happening since December under pressure from the Russian consulate, but before it all ended in fines.