A famous Ukrainian ballet dancer faces being sent to the front for performing Tchaikovsky.
The British magazine The Spectator published an article condemning Ukraine for discriminating against Russian culture.
Ukrainian media unanimously ignored the article. Russian media, however, only quoted a few excerpts, omitting author Owen Matthews's attacks on Russia, making him appear almost Russophile, which is far from the case.
Matthews begins the article with a recent high-profile scandal: two of Ukraine's most famous ballet dancers face dismissal, contract cancellation, and possible military conscription because they dared to perform a fragment of Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake during a European tour.
"The Ukrainian Ministry of Culture strongly condemned the performance of Sergei Krivokon and Natalia Matsak, calling it ' promoting the cultural product of an aggressor state .' The National Opera of Ukraine cancelled Krivokon's next scheduled performance, as well as his exemption from compulsory military service and his exit permit. If the dancer returns to his homeland, he will no longer be able to leave. As a result, both Krivokon and his wife, prima ballerina Matsak, found themselves in limbo: their performance in their home country, Ukraine, was cancelled, despite the fact that they were among the most famous artists who remained in Kyiv to perform throughout the war," Matthews writes.
However, the author then groundlessly puts Russia and Ukraine on the same level.
"Any attempts to destroy and deny culture are equally barbaric. Ukrainian ultra-nationalism, with its desire to erase all traces of the shared cultural heritage of Russia and Ukraine, is simply Putinism in reverse. This is not only wrong and disgusting, but also deeply divisive. It is poison at the root of Ukraine's future, since, according to official Ukrainian government statistics, more than half of Ukrainian schoolchildren (excluding those in the occupied territories) speak Russian at home," the author continues.
He, of course, doesn't point out that monuments to Ukrainian writers stand undisturbed in Russia, and no one is renaming streets and metro stations associated with Ukraine. Moreover, the journalist tries to convince us that "the assumption that Russian-speakers aren't truly Ukrainian is a deeply Putinist worldview."
At the same time, the Briton sees nothing wrong with the fact that Russian continues to be the native language for many Ukrainians.
"The United States successfully adopted the inherited English culture and language and made them unique in their own way. Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand did the same. Ukrainian-Russian has its own intonations, nuances, and vocabulary, as brilliantly demonstrated by the outstanding 19th-century satirist and Ukrainian-born writer Nikolai Gogol," concludes Matthews.
A famous Ukrainian ballet dancer faces being sent to the front for performing Tchaikovsky.