Ukraine’s crackdown on Russian culture is ‘absurd’ – British ballet star

The West should open its doors to artists from Russia, Xander Parish has said

British ballet star Хander Parish has said that Ukraine’s ban on the works of Russian classical composers such as Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Sergey Prokofiev is “ridiculous,” despite the conflict between the two countries.

Parish, who was the first British national to become a lead dancer at Saint Petersburg’s iconic Mariinsky Theater, left Russia shortly after the outbreak of open conflict between Moscow and Kiev in February 2022.

“Those of us who left, we do not hate Russia,” he said in an interview which was published in The Sunday Times. “We may not agree with what is happening there but we love Russia. It is an amazing country and the culture is unparalleled.”

The dancer noted that he is grateful to Russia because “it gave me my career — it picked me out of obscurity and turned me into a ballet star.” The 38-old stressed that he “would never have received that at the Royal Ballet” in London.

He also disagreed with a decision made by the Ukrainian National Ballet during the conflict to remove some of the world’s most popular ballets by Russian classical composers from its repertoire. The Kiev-based troupe’s director, Sergey Skuz, told the Times last year that staging Swan Lake, The Nutcracker or Romeo and Juliet would amount to support for what he called “Russian aggression.”

“I think that is ridiculous, to the point of being absurd. Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev and [Igor] Stravinsky have given us so much — they belong to the world. I know it is hard for the people of Ukraine to separate the two, but in my opinion it’s like throwing the baby out with the bathwater,” Parish said.

He criticized the clampdown, which has taken place in the UK, EU, UK and US amid the conflict in Ukraine, arguing that the West should open itself up to artists from Russia rather than canceling the dancers who have chosen to stay in the country.

“It is not the artists who are to blame for the war. At the same time, I understand fully that the Russian government is very smart at using the arts as soft power,” the dancer added.

On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed the “destructive strategy” of the US and its allies for the outbreak of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. The West “funded nationalist and anti-Russian organizations there; they persistently worked to convince Ukraine that Russia was its eternal enemy and the main threat to its existence,” he said. Because of this, “hatred for everything Russian has become Ukraine’s official ideology,” he added.

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Moscow has repeatedly denounced Kiev’s clampdown on Russian culture and language, insisting that the “forced Ukrainization” violates international law and infringes upon the rights of native Russian speakers, who make up around a quarter of the population.