<!-- wp:html --><p>Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty</p>
<p>Activists around the world have been calling for a boycott of Russian culture for months, as punishment for <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/russia-promises-more-disasters-and-dead-bodies-in-war-on-ukraine-in-2023">Vladimir Putin’s relentless aggression in his war on Ukraine.</a> But it seems there will be no need for any radical measures soon: Russia is destroying its art and cultural projects all on its own.</p>
<p>Since the start of the war, <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/kremlin-state-media-turns-on-russian-elite-in-paranoid-frenzy-over-war-in-ukraine">state censors and so-called hurrah-patriots</a> have rallied for bans against <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/putin-moves-to-crush-russian-artists-speaking-out-on-ukraine-war">popular Russian theater, art, and films</a> they deem “pro-Western.”</p>
<p>In a video posted to YouTube this week, the head of Moscow’s department of culture, Aleksandr Kibovsky, declared that <a href="http://publication.pravo.gov.ru/Document/View/0001202211090019?index=0&rangeSize=1">a recent decree signed by Vladimir Putin</a> “to strengthen Russian traditional, spiritual and moral values” gives Russian authorities the green light to cleanse the country’s cultural scene from all “Western influence.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/vladimir-putin-goes-full-grinch-only-traditional-arts-and-culture-allowed-in-russia?source=articles&via=rss">Read more at The Daily Beast.</a></p><!-- /wp:html -->
Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty
Activists around the world have been calling for a boycott of Russian culture for months, as punishment for Vladimir Putin’s relentless aggression in his war on Ukraine. But it seems there will be no need for any radical measures soon: Russia is destroying its art and cultural projects all on its own.
In a video posted to YouTube this week, the head of Moscow’s department of culture, Aleksandr Kibovsky, declared that a recent decree signed by Vladimir Putin “to strengthen Russian traditional, spiritual and moral values” gives Russian authorities the green light to cleanse the country’s cultural scene from all “Western influence.”
