Ukrainians angry about Oscar for Navalny film: ‘Docu is overflowing with internal Russian politics’ | Abroad

Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said yesterday that he had not seen the film by Canadian director Daniel Roher. I cannot judge its quality. Nevertheless, I dare to say that there is a certain element of politicization of the subject here,” said a rather subdued Peskov.

The film Navalny shows the life of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny from the moment he is poisoned in Tomsk in August 2020, to the moment he returns to Russia from Berlin six months later. There, the politician was immediately arrested upon arrival and sentenced to years of imprisonment, which he is now serving in the Vladimir region, east of Moscow.

Navalny is the main critic of President Vladimir Putin, who systematically refuses to name his opponent. Navalny’s close associates, all of whom have fled Russia, have raised the alarm over the opposition leader’s health in recent weeks. He would be withheld medication and would undergo certain forms of “mental torture.”

Maria Pevchich, Navalny’s right-hand man, published a rather smug photo of herself holding the gold statuette awarded. “We just won Oscars. Awesome. Release Navalny,” she wrote. Which leads the Ukrainian Viktoria to comment: “I haven’t wanted to punch a woman in the face so much since Skabeyeva and Simonyan,” referring to two female propagandists from Russian television.

The Ukrainian commentary illustrates the difficult (not to say ‘hostile’) relationship many Ukrainians have with the Russian opposition to Putin, who is ultimately their common enemy. But in Ukraine, where Russia has been conducting a so-called “special military operation” for more than a year, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths, the Oscar award for “Navalny” has been met with much resistance. The general tenor of Ukrainian criticism: the West insists on finding the ‘good Russian’.

“If the Oscar is outside politics, how should we do the documentary Navalny understand, which is overflowing with internal Russian politics?” Mykola Podoljak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky, wondered on Twitter. “If the Oscar falls outside the context of the war in Ukraine and the mass genocide of Ukrainians, why are you constantly talking about humanism and justice?”

The speech by Navalny’s wife, who received the Oscar with their two children, was also not well received in Ukraine. “My husband is in prison alone because he has spoken the truth and is for defending democracy,” Yulia Navalnaya said at the ceremony. But not a word about the bloodshed in Ukraine.

“Interesting logic from the organizers of the Oscars,” writes Ukrainian lawyer Mykola on Twitter. Zelensky was denied the chance to speak. At the same time, the wife of Navalny, a Russian politician who publicly refused the opportunity to return occupied Crimea to Ukraine, was given a platform.”

The Ukrainian journalist Ostap Yarysh therefore opens another thread on Twitter, in which he explains that Navalny is certainly not the liberal, right-thinking spirit that they take him for in the West. “Is he anti-war (in Ukraine, ed.)? He says yes. But does he reject the colonial approach and the idea of ​​Russian superiority and dominance over other nations? Absolutely not. And this is something to keep in mind.”

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