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Chris Phelps | @chrisphelps/Supplied
The Killers performing at Spark Arena.
US band The Killers have been forced to apologise after they were booed by a Georgian crowd when frontman Brandon Flowers asked if a Russian fan was their “brother”.
The incident happened during a show in the Georgian city of Batumi, when the band brought a Russian member of the audience onstage to play drums, the Guardian reported.
“We don’t know the etiquette of this land but this guy’s a Russian,” Flowers can be heard telling the crowd in a video, which responds with a mixture of cheers and boos.
“You okay with a Russian coming up here?” Flowers says.
Following the song, Flowers challenged the crowd amid further booing and walkouts.
“You can’t recognise if someone’s your brother? He’s not your brother?” he asked. “We all separate on the borders of our countries? … Am I not your brother, being from America?”
“I don’t want it to turn ugly,” he said. “And I see you as my brothers and my sisters.”
Flowers’ comments were likely unwelcome to the crowd due to the strained relationship between Georgia and Russia after the latter invaded the former Soviet territory in 2008.
Russia continues to occupy 20% of Georgian territory, which gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
In a statement following the show, The Killers apologised for the frontman’s comments, saying it was “never their intention to offend anyone”.
“We have a longstanding tradition of inviting people to play drums and it seemed from the stage that the initial response from the crowd indicated that they were okay with tonight’s audience participation member,” they added.
The band said Flowers’ comments “meant to suggest that all of The Killers’ audience and fans are ‘brothers and sisters’”, but that they also recognised this meaning “could be misconstrued”.
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