Ukraine sanctions Russia’s Biennale reps
Ukraine has imposed sanctions on five Russian cultural figures tied to Russia’s participation in the 61st Venice Biennale, a political move framed as targeting cultural propaganda during wartime ( ). The decree — signed by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as Decree No. 305/2026 — names organizers and participants of the Russian pavilion and has been widely reported across arts and regional outlets ( ).
Ukraine just sanctioned five Russian cultural figures over the Russian pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale, turning an art-world dispute into a formal wartime sanctions case signed by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Decree No. 305/2026 on April 10, 2026. (en.interfax.com.ua) The five names are Anastasia Karneeva, Mikhail Shvydkoy, Valeria Oleynik, Ilya Tatakov, and Artem Nikolaev, and Ukraine says all five are tied to Russia’s participation in the 61st Venice Biennale. (artnews.com; en.interfax.com.ua) Karneeva is the commissioner of this year’s Russian pavilion, and Shvydkoy is Russia’s special representative for international cultural cooperation and a former culture minister who publicly defended the pavilion’s reopening. (artnews.com; artnews.com) Ukraine’s case is not that these people made paintings or sang in Venice. Ukraine says they helped justify Russia’s war or spread state propaganda at international events, including through appearances in occupied Crimea and occupied parts of Donetsk region. (en.interfax.com.ua; artnews.com) This fight started before the sanctions. In March 2026, Ukraine’s foreign minister Andrii Sybiha urged the Biennale to exclude Russia, saying the exhibition must not become a platform for “whitewashing” war crimes while Russia continues attacking Ukrainian people and cultural sites. (artnews.com) The Venice Biennale took the opposite line. In its March 4, 2026 announcement, it said it rejects “exclusion or censorship of culture and art” and described Venice as a place of dialogue, openness, and artistic freedom. (artnews.com) That answer landed badly because Russia’s pavilion had effectively disappeared after the full-scale invasion. In February 2022, artists Kirill Savchenkov and Alexandra Sukhareva and curator Raimundas Malašauskas withdrew, and the Russian pavilion stayed closed that year. (artnews.com) Russia also did not mount its own show in 2024. Instead, Bolivia used the pavilion in the Giardini, which let Russia say it had never really left Venice even while it was not staging a Russian national exhibition there. (artnews.com; artnews.com) For 2026, Russia planned a full return with an exhibition titled “The Tree is Rooted in the Sky,” and Shvydkoy said it would feature more than 50 young musicians, poets, and philosophers from Russia and other countries. (artnews.com) The timing matters because the 61st Venice Biennale opens on May 9, 2026, after preview days on May 6, 7, and 8, so Ukraine’s sanctions landed less than a month before the event begins. (labiennale.org) Ukraine is also trying to push this beyond its own borders. Interfax reported that Kyiv plans to give partner countries the information needed to synchronize sanctions in their jurisdictions, which would turn an art fair dispute in Venice into a wider test of whether Russian cultural diplomacy can still move normally in Europe during the war. (en.interfax.com.ua)
