39 h. ago Intervision Song Contest: why Russia is reviving its ‘cultural counterweight’ to Eurovision

Conceived in 1960s Czechoslovakia, Vladimir Putin ordered the competition’s return and the US has now confirmed its participation – is this domestic theatre or international outreach?When singer-songwriter B Howard takes to the stage in Moscow this month, he’ll be making history. On 20 September the Los Angeles-born artist will be the first to represent the US at Russia’s revived Intervision Song Contest, a cultural spectacle that manages to be both nostalgic throwback and very modern geopolitical manoeuvre. While Eurovision has famously stretched its geographic boundaries to include Australia, Russia’s alternative contest represents a rather different kind of international outreach.Russia dusting off the Intervision brand, largely dormant since 1980 apart from a brief reprise in 2008, follows the country’s exclusion from Eurovision since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Its expulsion cut off access to a platform that – while often mocked by British audiences – had served...

Culture

64 h. ago Sen. Mitch McConnell warns: ‘This is the most dangerous period since before World War Two’

‘What we need to do is avoid the headline at the end of the war, ‘Russia wins, America loses.’ It has huge worldwide implications,’ McConnell said of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

Events

3 d. ago Russian cinema full of fairytales and propaganda, says Ukrainian film

Alexander Rodnyansky reflects on shift in Russian film as his documentary Notes of a True Criminal screens in VeniceThe Ukrainian film-maker Alexander Rodnyansky was once at the very centre of Russia’s cultural life. Over two decades he ran one of Russia’s biggest media conglomerates, produced some of the most celebrated films in recent Russian history – including the Oscar nominees Leviathan and Loveless – and helped bring Russian cinema to international prominence.But since the invasion of Ukraine, Rodnyansky said, he has witnessed a huge shift in Russian cinema. “The most popular genre in Russian cinema today is fairytales,” the 64-year-old told the Guardian. “They adapt all the stories we grew up with. There’s no single social drama, no movie reflecting life during the war. Continue reading...

Culture

3 d. ago Russian cinema has shifted to fairytales and propaganda, says Ukrainian film

Alexander Rodnyansky reflects on changes in Russian industry as his Notes of a True Criminal screens in VeniceThe Ukrainian film-maker Alexander Rodnyansky was once at the very centre of Russia’s cultural life. Over two decades he ran one of Russia’s biggest media conglomerates, produced some of the most celebrated films in recent Russian history – including the Oscar nominees Leviathan and Loveless – and helped bring Russian cinema to international prominence.But since the invasion of Ukraine, Rodnyansky said, he has witnessed a huge shift in Russian cinema. “The most popular genre in Russian cinema today is fairytales,” the 64-year-old told the Guardian. “They adapt all the stories we grew up with. There’s no single social drama, no movie reflecting life during the war. Continue reading...

Culture

3 d. ago Xi, Putin and Kim: behind the choreographed image that could symbolise a shift in the global balance of power

In an unprecedented spectacle the leaders of Russia, China and North Korea led a group of more than 20 world leaders at a victory day parade in BeijingFull report: Xi Jinping appears with Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un at China military paradeIt is an image that, had it been published just a few years ago, would have been dismissed as a piece of mischievous photo-shopping: the leaders of Russia and China, accompanied by the head of a pariah regime whose mission to arm his country with nuclear weapons had been opposed at the United Nations by his two companions.But dramatic shifts in the geopolitical landscape – Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and, crucially, the re-election of Donald Trump – have combined to bring Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un together in what many observers are calling a dramatic redrawing of the global balance of power. Continue reading...

Politics

4 d. ago Tainted love: how Ukrainians are ridding themselves of Russian

Putin’s invasion has seen Ukrainian book lovers recoil from Russian literary dominance, by a range of meansOne day this summer, the Ukrainian artist Stanislav Turina took two of his books to his garden near Kyiv. One was a volume of poems by Alexander Pushkin.But Turina – a voracious reader, never without a couple of books in his backpack – had no plans to pick it up again. Continue reading...

Politics

4 d. ago Art and politics are not the same thing – but the Anna Netrebko case shows what happens when they collide | Martin Kettle

The arts and politics are bound to mix, but they are not the same thing. In the cold war, Soviet artists performed in the west. Should the Russian soprano, who has condemned the Ukraine invasion, be blocked from singing in London?It is one of my very earliest concert memories. In October 1965, my father drove us to Manchester to hear Mstislav Rostropovich play in the Free Trade Hall. Rostropovich played Dvořák’s cello concerto with the Moscow Philharmonic, who began the concert with a symphony by Tikhon Khrennikov and ended it with one by Brahms. I was smitten by Rostropovich’s noble playing. I had never heard a musician like him before.This was, though, a concert taking place slap-bang in the middle of the cold war. The Cuban missile crisis had taken place less than three years earlier. The Berlin Wall was still fairly new. The Vietnam war was deepening. That summer I had read The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. The movie version of Le Carré’s novel, with Richard Burton, was due out...

Politics

1 week ago ED MILIBAND: 'Reform and Tories will put UK at Putin's mercy over energy'

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband says: 'What is keeping bills high is that wholesale gas prices are still 75% higher than before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine'

Politics

1 week ago Ukrainian refugee, 23, who fled Putin's war stabbed to death at train station

Iryna "Ira" Zarutska, 23, fled to the US following Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine but was tragically killed in Charlotte, North Carolina - a man has been charged with her murder

Events

1 week ago Heathrow flight is forced to make emergency landing in Russia after engine failure, leaving hundreds of passengers trapped onboard

All flights from the UK to Russia have been banned since Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022

Events

1 week ago Ukraine condemns Woody Allen for speaking at a Russian film festival

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry condemned Woody Allen for speaking at a Russian film festival, calling his participation in the event “a disgrace and an insult” to the victims of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine

Culture

1 week ago Norway's leader is the latest to visit Ukraine as Trump weighs peace options

Norway’s prime minister says his country's multibillion-dollar military and civilian support for Ukraine’s fight to defeat Russia’s invasion will stretch into next year

Politics

2 w. ago Trump needs to understand what the war in Ukraine is really about | Kenneth Roth

It’s not about Nato or the Soviet Union. It’s about democracyIt may be difficult for a real-estate mogul like Donald Trump to recognize, but Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is not about slices of war-torn land in eastern Ukraine. It is about Ukraine’s democracy. Putin fears that the Russian people will see that democracy as an enticing alternative to his stultifying autocratic rule. Trump is unlikely to secure a peace deal unless he acts on that reality and changes the cost-benefit analysis behind Putin’s continuing war.Much of the public analysis of the Alaska summit between Trump and Putin, and the Washington collection of European leaders protecting the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, from the temperamental Trump, has been replete with red-herring issues. For example, Putin did not invade Ukraine because of feared Nato expansion. The unanimous consent of all Nato members required to admit Ukraine is nowhere on the horizon, especially since article 5 of the Nato tre...

Politics

2 w. ago Trump steps back from Russia and Ukraine peace talks for now, sources say

US president told top advisers trilateral meeting would take place after leaders of the two countries have met firstDonald Trump intends to leave Russia and Ukraine to organize a meeting between their leaders without directly playing a role for now, according to administration officials familiar with the situation, taking a step back from the negotiations to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.The next stage in Trump’s eyes to end the war in Ukraine remains a bilateral meeting between Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, the officials said. Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago ‘No Russian words from my lips, no Russian music from my hand’: the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra hit the UK

With apps giving them air-raid warnings, the Kyiv-based musicians now see themselves as soldiers and their instruments as weapons. So what will they play when they arrive in Britain this month?‘People often ask me about my work with Ukrainian musicians,” says the Canadian conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson. “They will say things like, ‘How are things out there? We don’t hear much about the war, I guess it’s all calmed down a bit.’ When I hear that I want to scream, ‘No, it really hasn’t calmed down!’.”Wilson established the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra in the weeks after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. With her husband, Peter Gelb, general manager of New York’s Metropolitan Opera, she contacted leaders of the world’s top international orchestras and located dozens of elite Ukrainian musicians – some working in western Europe, some who had fled Russia, others performing in Kyiv, Lviv or Odesa – to establish a 75-piece “battalion of culture” who would assemble for ...

Events

2 w. ago Marco Rubio confronted by news anchor over past opposition to ‘deal’ with Putin

‘You can’t cut a deal with a guy like this,’ said Rubio of Vladimir Putin shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

Politics

2 w. ago Trump fury over 'Fake News' on Putin meeting over 'Biden’s stupid War'

Trump has been left furious following his meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin earlier this week, as he branded the invasion of Ukraine as 'Biden's stupid war'

Politics

3 w. ago Putin ‘rewarded’ for Ukraine invasion with Trump summit, experts warn

The summit was aimed at kickstarting a peace process to end the war in Ukraine.

Events

3 w. ago Zelensky to meet Trump after Putin peace talks end with no deal: Ukraine president will fly to Washington to discuss next steps to end Russia's invasion

Zelensky said he had been invited to the White House after a 'long and substantive' conversation with Trump which lasted for more than 90 minutes and later involved European leaders.

Politics

3 w. ago Backlash in Washington as Trump gives Putin a red carpet welcome in Alaska

First meeting since full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago attracts criticism from the president’s allies

Politics