Open letter to members of the Council of the European Union from People's Artist of Russia and Hero of Labour of Russia, film director Nikita Mikhalkov

I was placed on the EU sanctions list by the Council of the European Union’s Regulation No. 2022/2476 of December 16, 2022 amending EU Regulation No. 269/2014 on restrictive measures with regard to actions that undermine or threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine.

The decision states the following to justify my inclusion on the sanctions list:

“Nikita Mikhalkov is Russian filmmaker, actor and public figure, who actively supported Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine in his public statements.

He has been vocal in spreading Kremlin propaganda narratives on Ukraine since 2014. He has expressed support for the annexation of Crimea and the recognition of the independence of the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk Republics. He is the Chairman of the Russian Foundation of Culture, a public organisation which was established by a Decree of the President of the Russian Federation in 2016. He has justified Russia’s war of aggression, in order to protect Donbass from alleged crimes of Ukraine that took place against the civil population. He has blamed Ukrainians for so-called Russophobia, saying the ‘conflict’ between the two countries was inevitable. He has called the Ukrainian language a ‘catastrophe’ for Russia, because it allegedly formulates hatred against the country and spreads Russophobia. Mikhalkov called for the complete exclusion of teaching in Ukrainian in schools in Donbass. He has supported the Kremlin’s false narrative concerning biological weapons in Ukraine and heroicised Russian prisoners fighting in Ukraine. In 2022 he received the title of Hero of Labor in a ceremony in the Kremlin, and made a speech in support of the war of aggression against Ukraine.”

I, Nikita Sergeyevich Mikhalkov, film director, screenwriter, producer, winner of the Academy Award, two Golden Lions of the Venice Film Festival, the Grand Prix of the Cannes Film Festival and many other awards, am writing only to point out that I am not a politician, a civil servant or a government employee. I am a Russian artist, a representative of an ancient Russian family, and I therefore consider it necessary to say the following regarding my inclusion on the EU sanctions list:

First, please do not regard my letter as an attempt to evade the sanctions that were imposed on me, because these sanctions were imposed on me by people whose words or actions cannot be trusted. Suffice it to recall the confession made by the ex-Chancellor of Germany, Ms Merkel, ex-president of Ukraine Poroshenko and ex-president of France Hollande, that all the long-term negotiations related to the Minsk agreements were a cynical lie in order to buy time and to sow outlandish Russophobia and brutal Nazism in the beautiful land of Ukraine. Or, remember how the civilised world supported Kiev's ban on Russian citizens of Ukraine speaking or thinking in their native Russian language. In addition, contrary to verbal promises made to the leadership of the Soviet Union about non-proliferation of NATO to the East, our country was surrounded despite the fact that it had complied with all agreements about reducing arms, including the withdrawal of our troops from Eastern Europe, the demolition of the Berlin Wall, and the almost complete destruction of the national defence industry, and so on, whereas NATO came right up to the borders of my country.

But that is not what I need to discuss. It is too obvious, not only to me, but to you as well, and therefore, everything that you are doing is consistent continuation of sweeping lies and North Atlantic expansion. I have something else in mind.

You, who consider yourselves to be a civilised democratic society, impose sanctions on someone who expresses his personal opinion in his own country, in his homeland, to his own people in his own language.

For 11 years I have been hosting the Besogon programme on Rossiya 24 Channel, and during these 11 years I have never changed my position on any of the key issues that I have raised. Last year alone, 229 million viewers watched my 16 episodes.

Do you really not understand that this number alone goes to show that what we talk about on our programmes is of concern to the vast majority of people living in Russia?

Without knowing what you are talking about, you declare me a Kremlin propagandist. For your information, if you’re curious: I do not receive a single kopeck from the channel or from the state, and I finance the programme myself. Moreover, my show has no commercials, which, believe me, with this kind of viewership, could become a source of significant income for me. My programme is not censored by anyone. On Monday, it gets included on the Friday morning broadcast schedule, and the channel receives Besogon episodes only late night Thursday and knows nothing about it other than the title, so nobody can influence its content.

I can only assume that your attitude towards me is the direct result of watching my programming and precisely because its truthfulness and independence help people find out the truth.

I’ll admit, it makes me happy.

In that case, you surely heard and saw me call for awakening of a sense of truth in you and suggesting looking with open eyes at the children killed by the Kiev regime in Donbass, the people burned in the House of Trade Unions in Odessa, the executed prisoners of war, and the torture and humiliation of civilians, in a word, everything that has resulted from your deceitful policy and the betrayal of the Minsk agreements that you signed.

You are sanctioning me, among other things, for my support of the allegedly false Kremlin narrative about biological weapons. Then why don't you sanction Ms Nuland, who publicly admitted the existence of biological laboratories in Ukraine, which is backed by documentary footage and documents that we showed on our programme?

You call Crimea’s reunification with Russia annexation and refuse to admit that after the Nazi coup that targeted President Yanukovych for assassination, a bloodbath was being planned and would have been carried out in Crimea, you are unwilling to believe and admit that more than 90 percent of the residents of Crimea voted, without a single shot fired or violence of any kind, for reuniting with the Russian Federation.

You deny our assertion about Nazism having been awakened in Ukraine and meekly accept the demolition of monuments to Soviet soldiers who defeated the German Reich and the renaming of streets named after great writers for Bandera, Shukhevych and other Hitler accomplices whose names should be anathema for all time for the Volyn massacre alone, in which old people, women and children were murdered.

I’m not going to dwell on these facts, because you saw everything in my programmes, otherwise you wouldn’t have sanctioned me. However, your goal is to see nothing of that and, most importantly, not to let others see it - the ones who are not yet blinded by your propaganda and who are not carrying out your orders from Washington.

You are afraid to face this truth because from January 1 to January 8, 53 million people watched reruns of our programmes. That is the population of several EU countries combined that imposed sanctions on me.

To conclude this letter, I would like to express my gratitude to you for recognising my work, because nothing else could explain your fear of the truth, which sooner or later will come out at an international tribunal by the countries and the peoples who today are awaiting our victory, but have neither the strength nor the capacity to express it openly. But you forget that, in addition to the Northwest, there’s also the Southeast, Africa and Latin America.

Lulled by a comfortable life under the US nuclear umbrella, civilised Europe, which once failed to listen to what Gaddafi had to say and killed him, will awaken with hundreds of millions of eyes of ordinary people who will wake up from this delusion and say “no” to you - loudly and clearly, as our president is saying it to you today, the only world leader standing in the way of the devastating tsunami of your hypocrisy. Together with him, the overwhelming majority in our vast country are saying “no” to you.

I understand perfectly well that few of the people to whom this letter is addressed will hear of it, but writing it is what mattered to me. 

Hear our “no” while you still have time for it.