Shevchuk is highly critical against the undemocratic society that has grown in Putin's Russia.

On March 3, 2008 he participated in a Dissenters March in Saint Petersburg, against the president elections where no real opposition candidates were allowed to run.

On September 24 and 26, 2008 he organized two peace concerts in Moscow and Saint Petersburg as a protest to the Russian-Georgian war. The name of the concerts "Don't Shoot" was taken from his song "Ne Strelyai" that he had written in 1980 as a response to the Soviet war in Afghanistan.

Together with his band DDT, he performed with both Ossetian and Georgian musicians, as well as the Ukrainian band Bratya Karamazovy, that he called peacekeepers. Parts of the profits from the concerts were given to those who suffered from the war, both Ossetians and Georgians.

Grand merci à Riccardo pour cette stimolante e commovente traduzione o meglio a dire, versione, perch' è come una canzone in se, proprio una ricostruzione. Vale a dire, la traduzione ideale, come sempre dovrebbe essere. Avec tout ça, je suis tout esbaudi de me lire (via R.V.) en italien. C'est comme disait Arthur Rimbaud, que « Je est un autre » - doublement ici. Au travers de la traduction de Riccardo, je découvre la puissance de la poésie qui percole venant de la source Carlo Levi au travers des canzones lévianes de Marco Valdo M.I. Il apparaît ce que je soupçonnais déjà depuis longtemps que ces canzones – spécialement celles du Cahier ligné, sont quelque chose de plus grand que ce qui était imaginé au départ, et doivent avoir été écrites par dessus l'épaule du scripteur.
Y aurait-il quelqu'un d'autre derrière Marco Valdo M.I. ? Serait-ce l'âne Lucien, Lucien lui-même, le fantôme de Carlo... (continua)