Vladimir Putin accuses West of trying to cancel Russian culture
Categories: FOREIGN COUNTRIES
President Vladimir Putin on Friday said the West was trying to cancel Russian culture, including the works of great composers such as Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Dmitry Shostakovich, and Sergei Rachmaninov."Today they are trying to cancel a thousand-year-old country," Putin said during a televised meeting with Russian winners of culture-related prizes."The proverbial 'cancel culture' has become a cancellation of culture," Putin said, adding that works by Russian composers were being excluded from concerts and books by Russian authors "banned". A number of events involving Russian cultural figures who have voiced support for the war have been cancelled, including some involving Valery Gergiev, General director of the St. Petersburg Mariinsky Theatre, who spoke to Putin during Friday's meeting.Putin has tried to justify attacks on Ukraine saying that his operation aims to “denazify” Ukraine, a country with a Jewish president who lost relatives in the Holocaust and who heads a Western-backed, democratically elected government. The Holocaust, World War II and Nazism have been important tools for Putin in his bid to legitimize Russia’s moves in Ukraine, but historians see their use as disinformation and a cynical ploy to further the Russian leader’s aims.World War II, in which the Soviet Union lost an estimated 27 million people, is a linchpin of Russia’s national identity. In today’s Russia, officials bristle at any questioning of the USSR’s role. What’s more, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish and has said that three of his grandfather’s brothers were killed by German occupiers while his grandfather survived the war. That hasn’t stopped Russian officials from comparing Zelensky to Jews who were forced to collaborate with the Nazis during the Holocaust.