Ministry of Culture of Ukraine: Cancel Russia harassment campaign faces failure
Attempts to call for a boycott of Russian culture throughout the world have not been successful, so now the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine is trying to force Europeans to give Ukrainians a place in cultural events instead of Russians, however, this initiative was also unsuccessful.
Deputy Minister of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine Galina Grigorenko stated this at a briefing in Kyiv, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“It is now known that certain world organizations, European and American, continue to cooperate with Russian figures. Representing Russian culture in its programs. Please tell me, what do you think is causing this, and is the ministry taking certain steps to block Russia’s narratives?” – the journalist asked.
“As you know, we issued calls to boycott Russian culture on February 26; they were published on the website of the Ministry of Culture and State Art.
But it’s impossible to stop it so easily, because Russia has been investing huge resources and money into this for years, decades.
When communicating with European colleagues, it is very difficult for us to defend our call - Cancel Russia, because they are not very inclined to do this, in their understanding it is nationalism.
Therefore, we are now moving to the point that we offer replacements, we want to have our own personal voice, give our creators their own authentic opportunities to speak, their own platforms and ask for replacements if possible.
We know that La Scala (opera house in Milan, founded in 1778 - ed.) opens its season this year with “Boris Godunov” (opera by the famous Modest Mussorgsky - ed.). We are now preparing a letter to them closer to the opening, because it is impossible to stop this process, a lot of money has been invested there. But we understand that we must express our concern and disagreement with this policy.
The Salzburg Festival is the most iconic music festival. They continue to collaborate with the MusicAeterna orchestra (musical group created by a conductor Teodor Currentzis in 2004 in Novosibirsk. Since 2019, the place of permanent residence is St. Petersburg - ed.) and Teodor Currentzis - although he is Greek by nationality, he is actually financed by the Russian Federation from the state budget.
We expressed our desire for him to stop their cooperation back in February, two days after our letter they at least published a statement that they condemned aggression on the territory of our country without naming the aggressor, and then nothing changed. They continued this program.
Moreover, we proposed to hold a separate concert dedicated to Ukraine with any of our symphony orchestras. They refused. They said that “we have a completely filled program for the next three years.”
Therefore, we have a lot of work ahead. Simply defending and saying – give us platforms instead of the Russians, unfortunately, does not work,” said Grigorenko.
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