An Oscar for a director who could not name the aggressor. Netrebko on stage at the Royal Opera House in London and the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris.
Putin’s friend, conductor Gergiev, attempting a return to the Italian stage. A bestseller set in Rublyovka. Paralympians who fought against Ukraine in Donbas.
Is this a coincidence or Russia’s strategy?
Recently, Pavel Talankin received the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for Mr. Nobody Against Putin – a film about how he secretly documented Russian state propaganda aimed at schoolchildren.
On the most prominent stage in global cinema, he said:
"For the sake of our future, for the sake of all our children—stop all these wars."
All these wars. Not "stop Russia." Not "Ukraine is a victim of armed aggression."
All wars. As if they were all equal in nature, interchangeable.
This is not the first Oscar awarded to Russian representatives during the full-scale invasion. First came Navalny, then Anora, a story about a Russian oligarch that, in essence, romanticizes the Russian mindset, and now this.
Meanwhile, Ukraine has received only one: for 20 Days in Mariupol. This year, Chernov’s 200 Meters to Andriivka was not even nominated.
This points to a successful Kremlin tactic: the world continues to search for "good Russians," preferring to notice a version of Russia one can talk to, rather than the war crimes it is committing.
Western artists gave Talankin a standing ovation.
In Ukraine, people heard something else in his speech — what he failed to say.
What no Russian opposition figure has yet been able to articulate.
It is precisely this gap in how Western elites and Ukrainians perceive courage and acceptability that needs to be honestly and deeply talked through.
Strategy, Not a Coincidence
What is happening with Russian cultural figures has a name: culturewashing.
It is a documented state strategy that uses art, sports, and public figures to separate a country’s international image from its actions in zones of armed aggression.
This is not propaganda in the classical sense — no leaflets, no television channels.
It is something subtler, and therefore more effective: a constant presence in the cultural space of the civilized world that signals:
We are part of this world.
We are people of culture.
We are not the same as the army, and what it does.
Russia has used this tool for decades. But after February 2022, after Bucha, Mariupol, and Izium, the stakes have changed.
This is no longer just about image. This is about impunity.
Impunity feeds on recognition. Every time the world shakes hands with Russian culture, it sends a signal: you are still in the game. Your crimes are not final.
Say the right words — and the doors will reopen.
Four Examples of the Same Tactic
Opera singer Anna Netrebko is the easiest case to understand.
For years, she was the face of Putin’s Russia: performing at his campaign events, receiving the title of "People’s Artist of Russia," singing at the opening of the 2014 Sochi Olympics, which were the same Games that were followed by the annexation of Crimea.
After February 24, 2022, her performances in the West were canceled. Then, she condemned the war — just one sentence, without naming names, without acknowledging responsibility. And that was enough.
In September 2025, Netrebko returned to the stage of the Royal Opera House in London. The theater’s new music director, Jakub Hrůša, explained his decision simply: "She condemned the war, and I have no reason not to take her words seriously."
In October, Ukrainian activists and the Ukrainian embassy in Romania managed to cancel her performances there. Yet just a few months later, she became acceptable again and is now performing in Paris.
The logic is simple — and dangerous: if it is enough to say "I am against the war," without specifying who is waging it and against whom, then the threshold for returning to the civilized world becomes symbolic rather than moral.
Only under intense pressure is the world still capable of ignoring Russian cultural figures who openly support aggression.
Last year in Italy, the World Congress of Ukrainians and Ukrainian communities united over 40 organizations in a petition to cancel the participation of Putin propagandist and conductor Valery Gergiev at the Un’Estate da RE festival, and they succeeded.
In October 2025, Reese Witherspoon’s debut novel, co-authored with Harlan Coben, Gone Before Goodbye, instantly topped the New York Times bestseller list.
The plot: an American surgeon travels to Rublyovka, the most exclusive and luxurious district of Moscow, to operate on a mysterious oligarch.
In interviews, Witherspoon said the book made her "very fascinated by Russia and its contrasts."
Millions of readers received Rublyovka as a glamorous, captivating setting, while at the same time, Russia was bombing Ukrainian cities and critical infrastructure, plunging millions into freezing blackout darkness.
The Ukrainian publishing house Vivat refused to publish the book. "For a Ukrainian publisher working during a war with Russia, such things offend not only the eye, but the soul," its director explained.
The West noticed neither the refusal nor the explanation. The book sold millions of copies.
The story with athletes is more complex.
Ukrainian military intelligence revealed data on six Russian Paralympians who directly participated in combat against Ukraine while also being allowed to compete internationally. Among them are officers who commanded units on Ukrainian territory and veterans of the so-called "special military operation," whom Russia is now "rehabilitating" through sports under its state program Heroes of Our Time.
Paralympic sport becomes a tool for the social rehabilitation of war criminals, and at the same time, a ticket back to the international stage.
The International Paralympic Committee allowed six Russian athletes to compete in the 2026 Winter Paralympics under the Russian flag — for the first time since 2014.
The flag returns. Restrictions ease. The war continues.
Returning to the Oscars: Talankin’s case is the most complex and important because he did real, meaningful work. His film is a genuine document of how Russia turns children into carriers of hatred toward Ukraine. His personal courage is unquestionable.
However, on a stage watched by millions, he chose language that shifted responsibility away from Russia.
"All these wars" is not neutrality. It is diplomacy at the expense of the victim. Courage is measured not only by what you risked. It is measured by what you ultimately managed to say.
The Myth of "Good Russians"
There is a study that anyone searching for "good Russians" should know.
The organization LingvaLexa surveyed 1,060 Russian prisoners of war in Ukraine who were properly fed, not tortured, and held in accordance with international law. The result: 43% consider Ukrainians less developed as people. Nearly one-third said they want to return and fight again.
This is not an abstraction. These are ordinary Russians — these are the people who form the social consensus that sustains Putin. This is who truly carries Russian culture.
Modern Russia is not the great culture of Chekhov, Dostoevsky, or Pushkin that the Kremlin promotes worldwide as a shield for its wars.
It is the culture of Ivan from Chelyabinsk or Aleksandr from Vologda, who come to Ukraine to kill, and even after being captured, are ready to do so again.
Why This Concerns Everyone
One might ask a simple question: what does it matter who performs in an opera, which book becomes a bestseller, or who wins an award, while a war is ongoing? Because cultural recognition is not separate from politics. It shapes the framework for decision-making.
When the West signals that Russia is "still in the game" culturally, it softens the political will. It means delayed sanctions, hesitation over weapons supplies, and the search for a "balance" that does not exist between aggressor and victim.
Impunity is not abstract. It is measured in missiles that keep flying because deterrence is insufficient. In children being buried because the world failed to say "no" in time.
This text is not even a call for the West to permanently close its doors to Russian culture. It is a way simpler request: to recognize that opening those doors is also a decision. And that decision has a cost. It is just that, for now, we are not paying that cost together.
For now, Ukrainians alone are paying — with their lives and the lives of their children.
While Netrebko performs in London and Paris, air raid sirens sound across Ukraine.
While millions read about Rublyovka as a romantic backdrop, our elderly freeze in their homes due to the total destruction of civilian infrastructure by Russian missiles.
The mechanism of culturewashing works precisely because it is invisible — because it looks like art, not strategy.
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