Russian performers and artists should not be made to pay the price for the war in Ukraine, according to one of the greatest Soviet-born ballet dancers.
Mikhail Baryshnikov, the leading male classical dancer of the 1970s and 1980s, is not in favour of imposing heavy sanctions on fellow artists or sports stars.
This month conductor Valery Gergiev and operatic soprano Anna Netrebko were among those who lost prestigious work in the west due to their ties to Vladimir Putin’s regime.
“An open exchange in the arts is always a good thing,” Baryshnikov said. “I don’t think it’s right to put the weight of a country’s political decisions on the backs of artists, or athletes, who may have vulnerable family members in their home country. For people in those exposed positions, neutrality is a powerful statement. And if you want me to be specific, Daniil Medvedev should play Wimbledon.”
Last week, the British sports minister Nigel Huddleston said the government would need assurances that any sportspeople entering the UK “are not supporters of Vladimir Putin”.
Baryshnikov also said he feared Russia would soon make any positive future impossible for its young people. “Right now there’s a Rubicon for Russia to cross. Either it will find a way to end this current conflict and live in an open global society, or it will be thrust backwards with no hope of recovery,” he said.
Daniil Medvedev, the Russian tennis player, should be allowed to play at Wimbledon, says Baryshnikov. Photograph: Matthew Stockman/Getty Images
Baryshnikov, 74, who was born in Riga, Latvia, and who defected from the USSR to Canada in 1974, wants to improve people’s understanding of Russia. He has joined fellow prominent artists who are critical of the Kremlin to set up True Russia, a GoFundMe campaign to spread a better understanding of Russian culture and to raise money to help refugees.
The campaign also involves the Russian writer Boris Akunin and leading Russian economist Sergei Guriev. Together they have issued a call to other people in exile, arguing they “do not have the right to remain idle”.
“The hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who have lost their homes, their livelihoods, their loved ones, and even their lives are bearing the full brunt of the blow. But all of us who speak Russian and belong to the Russian cultural world feel the blow too. …….
