[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-1240102251.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a decree on Friday that has imposed sanctions on five Russian cultural figures who are involved with organizing the Russian Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale. The news was first reported by UA News<\/em>.<\/p>\n \n\tThey include Anastasia Karneeva, who is the commissioner of this year\u2019s Russian Pavilion, and Mikhail Shvydkoy, Russia\u2019s delegate for international cultural exchanges and a former culture minister.<\/p>\n \n\tIn a release about the decree, the Ukrainian government characterized them as \u201cfigures who justify the aggression and spread Russian propaganda at international events. All of them are linked to the aggressor state\u2019s participation in the 61st Venice Biennale.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe Venice Biennale said in March that no sanctions had been broken. ARTnews<\/em> has reached out to the Biennale for comment about these new sanctions.<\/p>\n \n\tIn its March 4 announcement of the national pavilions, the Biennale said that it \u201crejects any form of exclusion or censorship of culture and art\u201d and that \u201cLa Biennale, like the city of Venice, continues to be a place of dialogue, openness, and artistic freedom, encouraging connections between peoples and cultures, with enduring hope for the cessation of conflicts and suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tLast month, Shvydkoy told ARTnews<\/em> that the Russian Pavilion will go on as planned despite any sanctions that might be levied ahead of the Biennale\u2019s opening in May. \u201cVarious sanctions may be devised, and official Western institutions may be prohibited from working with us, but no one can deprive Russia of the right to artistic self-expression,\u201d\u00a0he said.<\/p>\n \n\tThe sanctions also affect violinist Valeria Oleinik, singer Ilya Tatakov, and vocalist Artem Nikolaev. Tatakov and Nikolaev are listed as participants via the Intrada Ensemble; the ensemble\u2019s seven other members are not sanctioned. (The pavilion\u2019s artist lists includes Valerie Oleynik, likely a different English spelling of Oleinik.) The exhibition, titled \u201cThe tree is rooted in the sky,\u201d includes more than 30 participants, though only these three have been sanctioned.<\/p>\n \n\tUkraine\u2019s press release about the sanctions noted that Oleinik has visited the Crimean Peninsula since 2014 in support of its occupation by Russia, while Nikolaev \u201cparticipated in propaganda events in Crimea\u201d in 2025. Tatakov allegedly \u201ctook part in the creation of a propaganda film in the temporarily occupied territories of the Donetsk region to promote the ideas of the \u2018Russian world,\u2019\u201d according to the release.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cRussia\u2019s participation in the Venice Biennale is not about culture \u2013 it is about using international platforms to legitimize aggression and spread propaganda,\u201d Vladyslav Vlasiuk, an adviser to Zelenskyy on the country\u2019s sanctions policy, said in a statement. \u201cEither you oppose the Russian regime and have access to the cultural space of the free world, or you serve propaganda, face sanctions, and take part in the \u2018Cucumber\u2019 festival.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tRussia has not participated in the Biennale since its war against Ukraine began in 2022, when the artists selected for the festival that year withdrew. In 2024, it gave over its pavilion in the Giardini to Bolivia.<\/p>\n \n\tRussia\u2019s planned participation in the Biennale has been routinely criticized by figures in both the art world and politics. Shortly after it was first announced, Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha said in social media post that the Biennale \u201cmust not become a stage for whitewashing the war crimes that Russia commits daily against the Ukrainian people and our cultural heritage.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tSeveral members of the European Parliament have called on the EU to withhold funding from the Biennale because of Russia\u2019s participation, and Venice mayor Luigi Brugnaro said last month, \u201cIf the Russian government were to carry out propaganda, we would be the first to close the pavilion.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/ukraine-sanctions-russian-culture-figures-venice-biennale-1234780925\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-1240102251.jpg?w=1024″] Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a decree on Friday that has imposed sanctions on five Russian cultural figures who are involved with organizing the Russian Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale. The news was first reported by UA News. They include Anastasia Karneeva, who is the commissioner of this year\u2019s Russian Pavilion, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1877809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1877809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1877809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1877809\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1877809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1877809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1877809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}