Zach Crawford
(ANSA) – MOSCOW, JUNE 01 – “Your world is a world of fear and if it does not wake up it will die of its fears.” Thus began the open letter to Vladimir Putin by Mikhail Baryshnikov, a ballet legend who defected in the 1970s and opposed the Russian offensive in Ukraine.
The famous dancer, born in Latvia to Russian parents, crossed the Iron Curtain in 1974, turned into the Russian president after the site of the charitable project ‘Nastoïachtchaïa Rossia’ (‘The Real Russia’), supported by several cultural figures in exile and opposing military operations in Ukraine, was banned In Russia.
“Mr President, your servants, in fear, have ordered the blocking of our website,” Baryshnikov wrote in the message posted on the site and still available outside Russia. “For almost half a century I lived as a man in the free world! And even now people say I am Russian. And people call my friend Boris Akunin a Russian writer, and Sergei Guriev a Russian economist,” confirms this great dancer. Naturalized American in 1976.
“People like us have brought the Russian world an honor greater than all your high-precision weapons,” says the 74-year-old artist. “Your Russian world – a world of fear, a world that burns books written in Ukrainian – has no future as long as we are here, who were vaccinated in our childhood against this plague. On the other hand, our world has the future, despite all the obstacles you face. We know how to preserve on the values of our Russian world. And if your world does not wake up, it will die of its fears,” the speech continues.
The “Real Russia” charity project, founded by Baryshnikov, Akunin and Gureyev, raised 1.2 million euros for Ukrainian refugees. It is supported by such Russian figures as writer Lioudmila Oulitskaia, musician Andreï Makarevitch and journalist Leonid Parfionov. (Dealing).
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Laurence Malcom
