The Ministry of Culture of Ukraine published an additional list of artists who are forbidden from visiting the country, as their activity “threatens the national security” of Ukraine. The list includes 83 people, the Fund of Support and Protection of Rights of Compatriots reports. These are, for example, film directors Vladimir Bortko and Pavel Lungin, musicians Alexander Rosenbaum, Grigory Leps, Sergey Penkin, actors and actresses Vasily Lanovoy, Dmitry Kharatyan, Oleg Tabakov, Valentina Talyzina, Natalia Varley. The list was created according to recommendations by the Security Service of Ukraine and to the Law on Protection of the Information Tele-Radio Space of Ukraine. The Ministry warned TV-channels broadcasting New Year shows with the participation of these artists would be punished.
Moscow believes that this and other demarches toward Russian culture in Ukraine are connected with progressing Russophobia in the country.
“Even before the fratricidal civil crisis in Ukraine, 650 schools were closed in Ukraine between 2008 and 2013,” Leonid Slutsky, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on CIS Affairs, Eurasian Integration and Ties with Compatriots, said.
Summing up the results of the Committee’s work in 2015, he also pointed out: “Only one Pushkin Russian school works in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. By the way, in Kyrgyzstan, for example, an EAEU member state, we have certain questions, especially in the south, Dzhellalabad. Certainly we have questions about our beautiful Russian Slavic University, the Yeltsin Russian-Kyrgyz University. They have tried to change the rector there, who is a very prominent figure in the world of the Russian Central Asian region, Vladimir Ivanovich Nifadev, referring to his age. We have strongly opposed this. However, the structure of the federal government responsible for the Russian world, for that cultural and humanitarian presence, is financed by the state residually.”
According to Slutsky, “no language over the past few centuries has disappeared from the face of the planet as fast as Russian. 270 million people now speak Russian, but 350 million spoke Russian in 1989. Our compatriots are supported at times even ten times less than by other countries, where there are such structures as the Alliance Française, the British Council, the Goethe Institute, the Cervantes Institute, the Confucius Institute. They have priority financing and much more. We do not.”
A vector of the cultural and humanitarian presence of Russia is directed at the countries where our compatriots live. Slutsky calls it “Russians go home”. The slogan is connected with the difficult demographic situation in Russia.
The first phase of the Concept of Migration Policy until 2025 assumes the return of 300 thousand compatriots per year. “I hope that, over time, these empty spaces will be filled with compatriots not topically, we are obliged to provide jobs, schools and hospitals to prevent the situation that occurred a few years ago, when some families came, and then returned back to the countries of their original residence. Now, thank God, there is no such problem.”
