Putin's "Kulturkampf": Russia's clash with Western values

The Kremlin has invested tremendous effort in blacklisting writers, film directors and singers who left Russia in protest against Putin's total invasion of Ukraine, yet a new move by filmmaker Andrei Zvyagintsev has generated widespread admiration.

The Minotaur is an anti-war film about a provincial Russian businessman who is asked by the mayor to give up 14 men to the war, with or without their consent, to meet a quota imposed by Moscow. He eventually comes up with a sinister scheme to lure the men into the war by trickery.

It’s safe to say that Minotaur was not the kind of film Putin was hoping to encourage when he launched a government-sponsored program to promote “patriotic” films and books about the war in Ukraine. Yet even critics writing for Kremlin-controlled media found it hard to ignore the latest work from the country’s most internationally renowned director.

"There is a feeling that Andrey Zvyagintsev will be rewarded in Cannes this time too. He has gained both skill and wisdom," said Moskovsky Komsomolets, one of Russia's most popular newspapers.

Indeed, Zvyagintsev, who now lives in exile in France, won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival in late May. In his acceptance speech, he called on Putin to stop the “senseless war” in Ukraine, reports Strain.

This angered Putin's sycophants and sparked a wave of outrage from pro-war Kremlin bloggers. The current relevance of the director's views was implicitly acknowledged by the Kremlin, with Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, forced to respond to Zvyagintsev's appeal.

And this appears to be a significant breach in the information fortress that the Kremlin has sought to build through measures ranging from propaganda and suppression of dissident voices to outright and increasingly aggressive censorship. The growing number of internet shutdowns across Russia is just the latest step in the Kremlin’s strategic campaign to limit the population’s ability to communicate freely beyond state control.

Russia is now a major front in a new global arms race to shut down the free flow of information – a race that pits authoritarian regimes like Russia against democratic societies. This conflict is unlikely to be decided by a single technological breakthrough or result in a decisive victory by either side, but will instead become a long and exhausting war, measured not in months but in years.

In Russia, this campaign is being waged against a media landscape that has changed dramatically since 2022. On one side stand pro-Kremlin outlets, pro-war voices on social media, internet censorship, and security services that are busy identifying and punishing dissidents. On the other, there are independent Russian media outlets, as of 2022, most of them in exile, along with networks of activists and independent journalists still operating within the country.

At the start of the full-scale invasion, Russian exile media and their networks inside the country scored some major successes. When the invasion began in February 2022, millions of Russians turned to exile media disgusted by Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, hoping to understand what was happening and, in some cases, treating their turn to journalists abroad as a form of collective but private resistance to what they saw as an unjust and unprovoked war.

Later that year, even more Russians turned to foreign-based media outlets when the Kremlin announced mobilization, bringing almost every Russian family within reach of a state suddenly hungry for cannon fodder. Access to independent information became a matter of self-defense.

As a result, exile media outlets, such as TV Dozhd and Meduza, emerged as the most trusted voices for anti-war Russians – at home and abroad – but also a means of sharing information and, to a considerable extent, as a source of collective identity.

Four and a half years after the war began, the picture has changed. Anti-war Russians at home have not converted to the Kremlin's cause, nor have they abandoned their anti-Putin views. But many have grown weary of an endless stream of bad news — which means all news about the war.

As war fatigue has grown, Russian media in exile are trying to function as an information service about the most important issue of the day – the war itself.

Their audiences are increasingly turning away from such coverage, choosing ignorance as a form of psychological self-defense. When they feel compelled to check the news – after a drone strike in their city, for example – many of them turn to social media. Russian media in exile still exist, but they no longer have the same importance.

However, there is one sphere that continues to resonate on both sides of Russia's borders: culture and the arts.

By mid-2026, it is clear that culture remains fully capable of sparking a truly national conversation among Russians – both at home and abroad. When “Mr. Nobody Against Putin” – an anti-war documentary filmed in a Siberian school by a teacher who later fled to the West with the footage – won an Oscar, it sparked heated debate both within Russia and across the émigré community.

It works both ways: Lev Danilkin's book about the director of the Pushkin Museum, which includes an account of the hiding of German masterpieces seized by the Red Army in 1945, led to a heated discussion not only in Russia but throughout the émigré community.

Many people on both sides of the border followed with first concern and then anger the fate of an 18-year-old singer, Naoko, who was arrested for performing anti-war songs by Monetochka and Noize MC — two famous Russian singers now living in exile — on the streets of her native St. Petersburg to a crowd of young Russians. Videos of her performances went viral online.

When she was finally released and left Russia, she made a surprise appearance at a concert in Vilnius in December, performing alongside Monetochka and Noize MC. This deeply emotional performance resonated strongly with many Russians, wherever they lived.

As in the days of the Cold War, culture – books, films, documentaries and music – has once again become the framework for a national debate about the things that really matter, above all, war.

The GeoPost