Entrance blocked at Redka’s Lviv show, but performance went ahead
Activists blocked the entrance before the November 2 show. Audiences were admitted after a conversation with the comedian, but the sides described its outcome differently.
A group of activists, including serviceman and public figure Ihor Sholtys, blocked audience access to stand-up comedian Felix Redka’s show in Lviv on November 2, 2026. The entrance was reopened after a conversation with the performer, and the concert went ahead. ZAXID.NET and NV reported the incident, citing participants’ accounts.
The performance took place at the Drabyna photography studio at 20 Zelena Street. The venue was chosen after a concert at Lviv’s Dovzhenko Centre was cancelled. This was therefore not another cancellation, but an entrance blockade before a performance at a different venue.
Sholtys’s Threads post described the participants as veterans, serving military personnel and patriotic young people. He said they wanted answers about Redka’s statements defending the monument to Mikhail Bulgakov and his remarks about advocates of the Ukrainian language. Sholtys confirmed that the entrance had been blocked and that the comedian then came out to speak to those gathered and his audience.
Redka, whose Instagram post was quoted by NV, said Sholtys and about ten young people had blocked the entrance. The comedian said he came out to speak face to face, thanked the military for their protection, and that those he spoke to acknowledged he was neither a “Kremlin agent” nor a “fifth column.” In his account, the participants shook hands, dispersed and apologised to the audience for keeping them waiting in the cold.
Sholtys placed a different emphasis on the outcome. In his account, quoted by ZAXID.NET and NV, Redka agreed that some jokes and public statements could be interpreted ambiguously and as offensive to Ukrainian values. Sholtys also claimed the performer promised to avoid undertones casting the language and Ukrainisation in a negative light. This is Sholtys’s account of the conversation’s outcome, not a joint statement by the two sides.
The earlier Dovzhenko Centre concert had been scheduled for October 29. The venue announced its cancellation on October 5, ZAXID.NET reported at the time. According to the outlet, centre director Marta Ivanyshyn said no contract had been signed with the organisers. That cancellation preceded the November 2 performance and does not mean the later show was also cancelled.
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