

Italy has confirmed it has given a visa to the sanctioned Russian singer and MP Iosif Kobzon after the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, reportedly intervened to help him go to the European Union for cancer treatment.

The EU announced a travel ban and asset freeze on Kobzon, a celebrated crooner who is often called the “Russian Frank Sinatra”, in February. The performer had visited the rebel-held Donetsk region, near his birthplace, in October for a concert in support of pro-Russia forces there, singing a duet with their leader, Alexander Zakharchenko. The singer has been barred from entering the US since 1995 over suspected mafia ties.

Kobzon has now received a visa on humanitarian grounds and will undergo cancer treatment in Italy, the country’s foreign ministry told Deutsche Welle, adding that the decision had been agreed with the other EU members.

The performer has previously said Putin had helped him get around the sanctions. “Thanks to his intervention they gave me a medical visa,” he told radio station RSN last week.

Seemingly ageless, in his trademark dark-brown toupee and pencilled-in eyebrows, Kobzon turns 78 this month and has been suffering from prostate cancer for years. He has previously undergone operations in Germany.

A statement by Kobzon in July that he might in the future seek Putin’s help to get treatment in the west caused controversy in Russia, aggravating longstanding popular resentment over the many reports of political elites owning luxurious properties abroad and sending their children to foreign schools.

This has become even more of a sore topic of late as Russians have been asked to endure a falling rouble and embargos on foreign foods, which accompanied western sanctions against Russia for backing rebels in eastern Ukraine.

Many commentators accused Kobzon of hypocrisy over his anti-western rhetoric. He voted for a 2012 law against adoptions by US families, which prevented some Russian orphans from receiving treatment overseas, and even called last week for Russia to cut diplomatic ties with the US over a visa row.

His friend Yuri Kuklachev, a famous clown who performs with cats, told LifeNews in July that Kobzon had forbidden him to go abroad to treat a malignant tumour and “literally dragged” him in for treatment at a Russian clinic.



A survey by the liberal Ekho Moskvy radio station found 82% of its listeners thought Kobzon should not be allowed to go abroad for treatment. Mitya Aleshkovsky, a popular blogger and charity activist, wrote in July that treatment in Russia would be the “best punishment for the torture he and all the current MPs have subjected our country to”.

Others have called for compassion, including Katerina Gordeyeva, an author who has written about cancer and who described Russian oncology as antiquated and crippled by bureaucracy in a recent column about Kobzon. Numerous cancer patients have killed themselves in Russia in recent years, ostensibly due to regulations that make it difficult to obtain strong painkillers and a lack of social support for those who are ill.