Putin slams ‘barbaric treatment’ of Russian culture
Russian culture is facing tremendous pressure abroad amid unprecedented attacks on anything linked to Russia, President Vladimir Putin has said in a meeting with the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill. The president thanked the patriarch for his role in preserving Russian culture and the Russian language under these circumstances.
Safeguarding Russian culture “is particularly important nowadays when we are witnessing not just attacks on Russia but barbaric treatment of our culture even if it is a part of world culture,” Putin said during the meeting on Saturday.
These actions “do not reflect well” on those behind the attacks, the president stated, adding that Russia has not seen this level of animosity “for a long time.” He did not provide any specific examples of what he called the “barbaric treatment” of Russian culture.
His remarks came amid an unprecedented campaign to purge anything linked to Russia in Ukraine. Kiev has been demolishing monuments and renaming streets deemed to be linked to Russia or Ukraine’s own Soviet past.
In December, the Odessa city council ordered the demolition of a 19th century monument to Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, which was designated a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site. Later that month, an Odessa monument to the renowned Soviet poet, singer, and actor Vladimir Vysotsky was removed as well. The council described both monuments as symbols of “Russian imperial policy.”
Since the escalation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2022, the campaign to remove historical links to Russia and its culture has intensified in Ukraine. Kiev passed a law on what it called the “decolonization” of street signs, monuments, memorials, and inscriptions. In December 2022, a statue of Catherine the Great was taken down in Odessa. The city was founded under her reign in 1794.
Kiev also accused the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) of maintaining ties to Russia despite the church declaring independence from the Moscow Patriarchate in May 2022. The Ukrainian authorities have launched a crackdown against the UOC that has included numerous arrests of clergymen and church raids.
Ukraine’s Western backers have also used the conflict between Moscow and Kiev as a pretext for a crackdown on Russian artists, singers, and cultural figures. In a recent incident, Russian photographer Mikhail Tereshchenko, who won the World Press Photo Foundation contest in 2025, was banned from attending his award ceremony in Amsterdam.
