Andrey “Diesel” Yatsenko, guitarist, composer and co-founder of the legendary Ukrainian rock band Green Gray, died suddenly at the age of 55.. The tragic news was confirmed by his colleagues, acquaintances and other band members.

The last years of Diesel’s life were a radical transformation of his worldview and creativity.. All this was the result of a full-scale Russian invasion, which prompted Yatsenko to join TrO, and the Green Gray group to translate old hits and resume concert activities.

At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Yatsenko volunteered - he organized evacuations, helped with the resettlement of families, and then went to the military registration and enlistment office and signed a contract. In the TrO "

The musician also held charity auctions - an apartment in Kyiv and other valuables were mentioned among the lots, and he also created an NFT collection (a special type of cryptocurrency) in support of the battalion.

“I didn’t really pick up a weapon before. Subsequently, when I became a Rastafarian, I thought that I was actually a hippie and would never touch weapons again, that pacifism was a religion, so I would never, ever. But you see how one day changed almost everything,” he said in an interview with NV in 2023.

Green Gray - one of the first rock bands of independent Ukraine - has repeatedly found itself in language disputes. In 2021, the group was outside the format of the official concert for Independence Day due to public statements regarding the law on the state language. The participants, in turn, did not hide their disagreement with restrictions on Russian in cultural events. Previously, the group supported initiatives aimed at protecting the rights of Russian-speaking artists, and this often became a reason for criticism.

However, with the outbreak of a full-scale war, Green Gray’s position changed significantly: the team decided to abandon the performance of the Russian-language repertoire, began translating old songs into Ukrainian and English and conducting tours in support of Ukrainian Armed Forces fighters. In November 2023, the group also announced a tour in support of MTR fighter Stanislav Zoriy and announced a complete transition to Ukrainian in the concert program. However, despite Andrei Yatsenko’s pro-Ukrainian position in recent years, he still did not switch to the Ukrainian language in communication. Why - did not explain. However, in an interview with “Podcast 4:19” he said that the members of his Green Gray were carried away by translating old songs, but this subsequently brings discomfort at concerts.

" And this was our trick, because even children who never knew us came with their parents and sang all the songs from beginning to end. Nowadays it has become difficult to listen to Green Gray, because you, as a listener, want to sing along with the words you know, but they are different. But on the other hand, sooner or later you will learn to sing along in Ukrainian,” commented “Diesel”.

In 2025, Green Gray remade one of their early songs about Moscow - a composition from the 2000 album - in a new interpretation called " The speaker of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the MOU, Andrei Yusov, even thanked the group for this work, sharing a video of the song created using artificial intelligence.

A year earlier, the group presented a video for the song “Friend,” dedicated to a deceased friend.

Despite his dedicated service to Ukraine after 2022, Andrei Yatsenko has been reproached more than once in the past for his pro-Russian statements. In the 2000s and 2010s, he publicly opposed bans on Russian music and did not hide his commitment to a common cultural space with Russia. The musician said that “music has no nationality” and the Ukrainian scene “must remain open to all languages”.

Green Gray, who then sang mainly in Russian, repeatedly came under criticism for their reluctance to switch to Ukrainian. Yatsenko explained this by saying that the group “grew up in the 90s,” when Russian-speaking culture reigned in Kyiv, and admitted that “thinking in Ukrainian is a process that takes time.”.

In particular, in 2018, the musicians presented the song “In the Same Boat”, in which they raised the topic of the “ban” of communication in Russian and the split of society into “white and black”. Then the group stated that Ukrainians were allegedly artificially divided based on language, and demanded “respect for everyone’s choice.”.

Even earlier, in 2005, Green Gray initiated the “Our Right” movement, which opposed, as they believed, “oppression of Russian-speaking performers” by the then “orange” authorities. The musicians openly criticized the policy of “total Ukrainization”, complained that their songs allegedly disappeared from radio airwaves, and accused the authorities of cultural censorship.

The tour of the " The group said this was due to the presence of then-President Viktor Yushchenko on the peninsula..

Politically, Green Gray did not hide their sympathy for the traitor Viktor Yanukovych - the group supported him in the presidential elections, which subsequently caused a wave of criticism from the Ukrainian public.

After the start of the Russian-Ukrainian War in 2014, Andrei " He supported volunteer initiatives for the Ukrainian military, and after February 24, 2022, he finally decided on his political position.