Zelenskyy sanctions Russians participating in Venice Biennale

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has enacted a decision by Ukraine's National Security and Defence Council (NSDC) imposing personal economic sanctions on five Russian cultural professionals who are taking part in this year's Venice Biennale international exhibition.

Source: presidential decree on the President's Office website; the press service of the President's Office

Details: The President's Office press service said the sanctioned individuals "justify the aggression and spread Russian propaganda at international events", and that all of them are involved in Russia's participation in the 61st Venice Biennale.

Sanctions have been imposed on Anastasia Karneyeva, the commissioner of this year's Russian pavilion. She is the daughter of Nikolai Volobuyev, a retired general and deputy director of the major defence corporation Rostec. Also added to the sanctions list is Mikhail Shvydkoi, Russia's Special Representative for International Cultural Cooperation and a former culture minister, who supports the war in Ukraine and argues that culture exists beyond politics.

According to Shvydkoi, Russia's admission to the international exhibition means that "Russian culture is not isolated".

Some of the Russians who will take part in the Biennale have also been sanctioned: violinist Valeria Oleynik, who has repeatedly visited Russian-occupied Crimea since it was annexed in 2014; singer Ilya Tatakov, who helped create a Russian propaganda film in temporarily occupied areas of Donetsk Oblast; and vocalist Artyom Nikolaev, who took part in propaganda events in Crimea last year.

Vladyslav Vlasiuk, Commissioner of the President of Ukraine for Sanctions Policy, said that Russia's participation in the Venice Biennale is nothing to do with culture, but about using international platforms to legitimise aggression and spread propaganda.

Russia's participation in the 61st Venice Biennale

Russia will reopen its pavilion and take part in the Venice Biennale this year for the first time since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

More than 50 young musicians, poets and philosophers from Russia and other countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Mali and Mexico, will be involved in the pavilion.

One of the themes of the exhibition, titled "The Tree is Rooted in the Sky", is the idea that "politics exist within temporary dimensions, whereas cultures communicate in eternity".

The commissioner of the Russian project will be the aforementioned Anastasia Karneyeva.

"This is further proof that Russian culture is not isolated and that attempts to 'cancel' it – undertaken for the past four years by Western political elites – have not succeeded," said Shvydkoi.

The organisers said the event will feature five contemporary figures who "are very unpopular with their governments – the US, Israel, China, Russia and even the EU". There are also plans for a programme on Pavel Florensky, an Orthodox priest and philosopher who was executed during the Great Terror.

Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin has promoted Florensky as one of the thinkers who laid the foundations for the concept of the "Russian world" ("Russkyi mir") – the general idea of the superiority of Russian Orthodoxy, culture, language, etc.

Background:

• Ukraine has called on the organisers of the Venice Biennale to reconsider their decision on Russia's participation and to maintain the principled position demonstrated in 2022-24.
• The European Commission later warned it could suspend EU grant funding for the Venice Biennale if Russia is allowed to reopen its pavilion at this year's exhibition.
• Earlier, Italy's Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli called on Tamara Gregoretti – the government's representative on the Venice Biennale board – to resign over Russia's participation in this year's exhibition. He said Gregoretti had not warned the ministry that Russia might be taking part.
• The organisers of the Venice Biennale later said that no rules had been broken by allowing the Russian pavilion to reopen and insisted that the exhibition must remain a place of dialogue, openness and artistic freedom.

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