Commentary by the press-secretary of the Embassy of Russia Nikita Isakin

The article “Should Russian Art Be Boycotted for the Duration of the War in Ukraine?” by Mary Minihan, published in “The Irish Times” on January 7, calls for a brief commentary. The very formulation of the question does speak volumes of the “cancel culture” of current mainstream Western media, which apparently did not go far from the absurdity and grotesque of the society of yesteryear, so brilliantly depicted by Jonathan Swift in his “Gulliver’s Travels”. Fortunately, there is plenty of evidence that the Irish public at large does not mix politics and artistic expression, rejecting ludicrous calls to ban music by Pyotr Tchaikovsky or Dmitry Shostakovich, novels by Fyodor Dostoevsky or Leo Tolstoy or any other Russian artists, writers and musicians because of the conflict in Ukraine.

There is hardly any sense in commenting on the “proposals” of the Ukrainian Minister of Culture Oleksandr Tkachenko to boycott Russian art, mentioned in this article. It is just another manifestation of the theater of absurd, created by the Kiev regime – in this case with clear propaganda purposes. What is really striking though is the questionable choice of the main interviewee for the article – the one Maria Alyokhina, member of a freak group “Pussy Riot” notorious for their sex orgy in the biological museum and the desecration of the altar in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, for which they were rightfully sentenced for hooliganism. Since then Ms. Alyokhina and her companions have been playing the role of the professional “victims of the regime”, exploiting anti-Russian policies of the Western governments. To present “Pussy Riot” as a source of opinion on cultural matters is rather exotic proposition, bordering on an insult to the readers.