Russia

Subterms

    Latest story

    150 Shares189 Views

    Ukrainian Poet and Rock Star Fights Near Front and Performs Behind It

    by

    Serhiy Zhadan, 50, is a beloved Ukrainian poet as well as a novelist, lyricist and rock star. Furious over the invasion, he enlisted to fight even as his band still plays and his readings fill halls.When the Ukrainian army hit a crisis of recruitment earlier this year amid rising losses on the battlefield, one of the most popular cultural personalities in the country stepped up and enlisted.“At some point it became uncomfortable not to join up,” said Serhiy Zhadan, in an interview at a military base in July.A beloved poet, novelist, lyricist and rock star in Ukraine, Mr. Zhadan, 50, joined a local National Guard brigade in his home city of Kharkiv in May and started a two-month stint in boot camp. By summer he was serving in an engineering unit on the second line of defense.Many of his friends were already fighting, he said of his decision to enlist. “This feeling that someone is fighting for you, instead of you, while you are also able to join, was also important.”Although he said he did not intend to set an example, Mr. Zhadan’s decision to join the army resonated with many, across generations and with lovers of both his words and music.He can fill a sports hall or a Kyiv theater for poetry readings, as he did on occasions this summer, and his rock band was acclaimed for delivering the best set at the Atlas music festival, Ukraine’s largest, in July. Proceeds of his performances go toward buying medical supplies and other equipment for the soldiers.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Theater

      Russian Playwright and Theater Director Are Convicted of ‘Justifying Terrorism’

      by

      A theater director and playwright were sentenced to prison, a stark indication of the increasing suppression of free speech since Russia’s attack on Ukraine, their lawyers and critics say.A Russian military court found a playwright and a theater director guilty of “justifying terrorism” on Monday, sentencing them to six years in prison each in a case that critics say is the latest chilling example of the crackdown on free speech since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.The playwright, Svetlana Petriychuk, 44, and the director, Yevgenia Berkovich, 39, are both acclaimed members of the Russian theater world and have been in custody since May 2023. In addition to the six-year sentences, exactly the time frame requested by prosecutors, both women will be banned from “administering websites” for three years following their release.The play Ms. Petriychuk wrote and Ms. Berkovich staged, “Finist the Brave Falcon,” is an adaptation of a classic fairy tale of the same name, interwoven with the stories of women baited online by men into joining the Islamic State. It is loosely based on the true stories of thousands of women from across Russia and the former Soviet Union who were recruited by ISIS terrorists. The main character of the play returns to Russia feeling betrayed and disappointed by the man who lured her there, only to be sentenced to prison as a terrorist herself.The prosecutor, Ekaterina Denisova, insisted that Ms. Petriychuk holds “extremely aggressive Islamic ideologies” and formed a “positive opinion” of ISIS, according to the Russian outlet RBK, and that Ms. Berkovich holds “ideological convictions related to the justification and propaganda of terrorism.”Both women and their lawyers said they were innocent, repeatedly insisting during the trial that the play had an explicitly antiterror message.“I absolutely do not understand what this set of words has to do with me,” said Ms. Berkovich, when she pleaded not guilty. “I have never partaken in any forms of Islam: neither radical nor any other. I have respect for the religion of Islam, and I feel nothing but condemnation and disgust toward terrorists.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Mariinsky Dancers Barred From Youth Ballet Gala in New York

      by

      Two dancers from the Russian company were set to perform at a benefit for a prestigious competition for young dancers, but they were sidelined after protests by pro-Ukrainian activists.Two dancers from the Mariinsky Theater in Russia were barred from performing at a youth ballet gala in New York this week after their participation drew criticism from pro-Ukrainian officials and activists.The dancers had been set to take part in two performances, at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, that celebrate the 25th anniversary of Youth America Grand Prix, a prestigious ballet competition and scholarship program based in New York.But Youth America Grand Prix’s leaders removed the dancers from the program after critics said the organization was lending support to the Russian government by hosting the artists. The Mariinsky is a state-run theater in St. Petersburg led by the conductor Valery Gergiev, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin.Youth America Grand Prix said in a statement that the decision “gives us great pain.” It said that in the hours before the first performance on Thursday, it had learned — along with Lincoln Center and others in the ballet world — of possible protests. After consulting with New York City Ballet, which operates the Koch Theater, it said that “it was agreed to cancel the performances of the scheduled Mariinsky Ballet dancers.”“Art should unite us, not divide us,” Larissa Saveliev, the founder of Youth America Grand Prix, said in a statement. “In a difficult period, ballet should be healing. This is terribly sad.”Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Russian artists and institutions have come under intense scrutiny on the global stage. The Bolshoi Theater in Moscow and the Mariinsky have faced cancellations abroad and have lost prestigious partnerships. Some stars, including Gergiev, who also leads the Bolshoi, and the soprano Anna Netrebko, have been shunned in the West because of their ties to Mr. Putin.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares129 Views

      in Theater

      Michael Stuhlbarg Is Attacked in Central Park Before ‘Patriots’ Debut

      by

      The actor was walking on the Upper East Side on Sunday when a man threw a rock at him, striking the back of his neck, the police said. He is set to appear on Broadway on Monday evening.One day after he was struck with a rock in a random attack on the Upper East Side, the actor Michael Stuhlbarg will appear in Monday’s first preview of the Broadway play “Patriots,” in which he stars as a Russian oligarch who helped facilitate Vladimir V. Putin’s rise.Stuhlbarg, best known for his role as a gangster in the series “Boardwalk Empire,” was walking in Central Park on Sunday evening when a man threw a rock, hitting him in the back of the neck, the police said.Stuhlbarg chased the man, Xavier Israel, 27, out of the park, where he was taken into custody and charged with assault. The location where the man was arrested on East 91st Street is the address for the Russian consulate.The police said Stuhlbarg declined medical attention.Stuhlbarg “feels fine” and will appear onstage on Monday for his debut in “Patriots,” the show said in a news release. He plays Boris A. Berezovsky, a Russian business tycoon who reigned in post-Soviet Russia and helped install Putin as president, but then had a bitter falling out with the Kremlin and died in exile.The play, written by Peter Morgan, the creator of the British royalty drama “The Crown,” and directed by Rupert Goold, opens on April 22. It was first staged in 2022 in London, where Tom Hollander played Berezovsky.Stuhlbarg, 55, had his breakthrough lead performance in the Coen brothers film “A Serious Man,” going on to numerous onscreen roles, including as Dr. Richard Sackler, the prescription opioid magnate, in the limited series “Dopesick,” for which he was nominated for an Emmy.A fixture of New York’s theater scene in the 1990s and early 2000s, Stuhlbarg last appeared on Broadway in 2005, when he received a Tony nomination for starring in Martin McDonagh’s “The Pillowman.” More

    • 88 Shares129 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Veselka’ Review: Serving Up Support for Ukraine

      by

      Subtitled “The Rainbow on the Corner at the Center of the World,” this documentary offers a warm tribute to an East Village landmark.You would be hard pressed to find a New Yorker unfamiliar with the name Veselka. The pierogi and borscht eatery, established in 1954 by a Ukrainian émigré, is a staple of the East Village, where its genial diner atmosphere — overseen by Jason Birchard, the founder’s grandson — draws everyone from university students to seasoned old-timers.“Veselka: The Rainbow on the Corner at the Center of the World” pays tribute to the cultural landmark by taking viewers inside the restaurant during an uneasy period: Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Directed by Michael Fiore, the documentary establishes Veselka’s Ukrainian roots and then chronicles Birchard and his staff’s real-time campaign to support their besieged home country.The film’s most stirring through lines revolve around the stories of employees, including Vitalii, a Veselka manager who convinces his mother to flee Ukraine and live with him in the United States. Seeking routine, Vitalii’s mother even accepts a position in the Veselka kitchen, where she finds others who speak her language, appreciate her stress and offer a measure of community.Tugged along by superfluous narration (by David Duchovny), the film also documents the participation of Veselka workers in a variety of fund-raisers and symbolic appearances. These events are, admittedly, more exciting in principle than as documentary cinema. But even if some scenes want for energy, the compassion of the “Veselka” subjects — and its filmmaker — never wavers.Veselka: The Rainbow on the Corner at the Center of the WorldNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      Life Imitates Art as a ‘Master and Margarita’ Movie Stirs Russia

      by

      An American director’s adaptation of the beloved novel is resonating with moviegoers, who may recognize some similarities in its satire of authoritarian rule.By all appearances, the movie adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s cult favorite novel “The Master and Margarita,” in Russian theaters this winter, shouldn’t be thriving in President Vladimir Putin’s wartime Russia.The director is American. One of the stars is German. The celebrated Stalin-era satire, unpublished in its time, is partly a subversive sendup of state tyranny and censorship — forces bedeviling Russia once again today.But the film was on its way to the box office long before Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine and imposed a level of repression on Russia unseen since Soviet times. The state had invested millions in the movie, which had already been shot. Banning a production of Russia’s most famous literary paean to artistic freedom was perhaps too big an irony for even the Kremlin to bear.Its release — after many months of delay — has been one of the most dramatic and charged Russian film debuts in recent memory. The movie refashions the novel as a revenge tragedy about a writer’s struggle under censorship, borrowing from the story of Bulgakov’s own life. The emphasis, for many Russians, has hit close to home. And, for some defenders of Putin, too close.“I had an internal belief that the movie would have to come out somehow,” the director, Michael Lockshin, said in a video interview from his home in California. “I still thought it was a miracle when it did come out. As for the response, it’s hard to expect a response like this.”Michael Lockshin, right, the movie’s director, with Tsyganov during the production of the movie.Mars MediaWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      Two Pianists Make a Life Out of an Intimate Art Form

      by

      Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy, partners onstage and off, began to play as a duo in school. Now, they are dedicating their careers to it.It looked like some kind of grand music exam. The pianists Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy sat down at their instruments onstage at Wigmore Hall and began to play for an audience of two.The rest of their listeners were online. It was June 2020, and Kolesnikov and Tsoy were, like virtually every other musician at that time, playing a livestreamed concert. Despite the hall’s chilly emptiness, there was something heartening: Here were two musical and romantic partners sharing a bit of their domestic lives as they worked through a messy pile of sheet music spread out on a single Steinway piano.Now, things are more or less back to normal. When they sat for an interview at their elegant northwest London home recently, Kolesnikov had just returned from Copenhagen as a replacement soloist in Tchaikovsky’s First Concerto, and was about to jump in — in Copenhagen again — to play Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto. (He could be heard frantically recapping the piece as he walked down the street. “It’s not something you can just pull out of your pocket,” he said.)The pandemic forced Kolesnikov, 34, and Tsoy, 35, to recalibrate. After so much time spent at home together, returning meaningfully to the genre of four-hands music — through which they had met — they emerged with a desire to dedicate themselves to playing as a duo. They signed to new management as both solo artists and partners last October, and will make their duo debut at Carnegie Hall on Feb. 13, with their first album together to follow this summer.“I consider this possibly the hardest form of chamber music,” Kolesnikov said of the piano duet. “This genre is a very interesting merge of something that is extremely homely, extremely intimate and private. Then one thinks, how do you take that onstage?”A Domestic Art FormThe piano duet has always been closely tethered to the home. Grove Music describes it as a “modest, essentially domestic branch of music,” more frequently associated with a student’s early experiences than with the public-facing openness of a concert hall.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in Television

      Ukraine Criticizes HBO, Saying New ‘White Lotus’ Actor Supports War

      by

      On social media, Ukraine’s foreign ministry posted clips of the Serbian actor Milos Bikovic receiving a medal for cultural achievement from Vladimir Putin in 2018.Ukraine’s foreign ministry criticized HBO this week after Milos Bikovic was cast in the third season of “The White Lotus,” saying without evidence that the Serbian actor had supported Russia since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.HBO announced on Jan. 12 that Bikovic, 36, would be joining the dark comedy about wealthy tourists at island resorts. On Wednesday, the foreign ministry of Ukraine made the accusations against Bikovic on social media, writing, “HBO, is it all right for you to work with a person who supports genocide & violates international law?”Bikovic was awarded the Pushkin Medal, which honors contributions to Russian arts and culture, by President Vladimir V. Putin in 2018 and received Russian citizenship by presidential decree in 2021.In February 2022, the day after the invasion began, Bikovic said on Instagram that he wished the war had not happened. “War and bloodshed on any side reminds us of how far humanity is from global unity and love,” he wrote in Russian and Serbian. “God save the lives of all those who are now in danger!”Ukraine’s foreign ministry and Bikovic did not respond to requests for comment. An HBO spokesman said questions should be directed to Bikovic’s representatives.President Biden has called Russia’s invasion genocide, and The New York Times has collected evidence of brutalities by Russia, including the willful killing of noncombatants.A 79-second video that Ukraine’s foreign ministry posted on social media interspersed scenes from “The White Lotus” with clips of Bikovic accepting the award from Putin and previous comments it said the actor had made about Russia. In a voice-over, it claimed that Bikovic was “the Kremlin’s foreign mouthpiece.”During Bikovic’s acceptance speech for the Pushkin Medal, he emphasized unity between Russia and Serbia. “What a joy for Russians and Serbs in our homeland because we have the same worldview,” he said in Russian.Ukraine barred Bikovic from entering the country in 2019 for what it called national security reasons. At the time, he told a Serbian publication that “from the human and poetic point of view the situation is absurd and interesting.”Before he was cast in “The White Lotus,” Bikovic acted in movies including “South Wind,” which follows a gang member in Belgrade; “Sunstroke,” about military officers remembering the collapse of the Russian Empire; “Ice,” in which he plays a figure skater; and “The Balkan Line,” about a military operation during the Kosovo war.Season 3 of “The White Lotus” is set to begin production in Thailand next month and is scheduled to air in 2025. It will feature Walton Goggins, Carrie Coon, Parker Posey and the returning cast member Natasha Rothwell. More

    • 100 Shares109 Views

      in Music

      Nadya Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot Marries John Caldwell

      by

      Nadya Tolokonnikova, a founding member of Pussy Riot, and John Caldwell have always prioritized being “helpful,” he said, over being happy.When Nadya Tolokonnikova, one of the founding members of the anti-establishment punk collective Pussy Riot, reached out to John Caldwell on Discord, an encrypted messaging app, he asked if she was a bot.“She just said ‘haha,’” said Mr. Caldwell, who was already familiar with her work. “I was very suspicious.”Ms. Tolokonnikova had developed an interest in cryptocurrency and blockchain and had heard about Mr. Caldwell, a partner at a financial services company who specialized in crypto, from a friend. “I was jumping on Zooms with random people with no romantic intentions, just learning about crypto,” she said.They met for dinner a few days later, in mid-September 2021. “It ended horribly,” Mr. Caldwell said. “She faked a call to Europe and left.”Ms. Tolokonnikova, an activist, musician and artist, described herself as a “super introverted person,” and said she normally spaces out meetings with new people. But at the time, she was in the process of crash educating herself on a new topic, and had therefore scheduled several meetings in one day, and the dinner with Mr. Caldwell was last.“I was overwhelmed,” she said. So she left abruptly. But, she said, “it was not a reflection on John at all.” In fact, she had been intrigued by their conversation about reproductive rights and religion, and by Mr. Caldwell’s suggestion that she tap into the deep pockets of the crypto world to raise funds for causes she was interested in.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More