LONDON – In Switzerland, the Lucerne Music Festival canceled two symphony concerts featuring a Russian maestro. In Australia, the national swimming team said it would boycott the World Cup in Russia. In the Magic Mountain ski area in Vermont, a bartender poured bottles of Stolichnaya vodka down the drain.
From culture to trade, sports to travel, the world is avoiding Russia in countless ways to protest President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Since the cold days of the Cold War, so many doors have not closed for Russia and its people – a global rejection driven both by the impetus to show solidarity with the besieged Ukrainians and by any hope that this will force Mr Putin to withdraw. his troops.
Boycotts and repeals are piling up in parallel with sanctions imposed by the United States, Europe and other powers. Although these mass gestures do less harm to the Russian economy than sharp restrictions on Russian banks or the shutdown of the natural gas pipeline, they carry a powerful symbolic blow, leaving millions of ordinary Russians isolated in an interconnected world.
Among the most visible targets of this disgrace are cultural icons such as Valery Gergiev, the conductor and longtime supporter of Mr Putin. He dropped out of Lucerne, Carnegie Hall, La Scala in Milan and faces the inevitable dismissal from the Munich Philharmonic, where he is chief conductor, unless he denies the invasion of Ukraine.
Russia was banned from this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, which it last won in 2008, with Dima Bilan performing his powerful ballad Believe. Russia’s Grand Prix in Formula 1, scheduled for September in Sochi, has been canceled. St. Petersburg lost the Champions League final, which was moved to Paris.
Russia’s hopes for the World Cup were dashed on Monday after a dozen countries joined Poland in refusing to play with their national football team in the qualifying rounds. Under strong pressure, the two main governing bodies of football, FIFA and UEFA, ruled that Russia did not qualify for their tournaments. In Germany, the Schalke football club has terminated a sponsorship agreement with Russian oil giant Gazprom. The National Hockey League has also suspended business in Russia.
Also Monday, Greece announced it would suspend all co-operation with Russian cultural organizations. Former French ballet star Laurent Iller has resigned as director of the Stanislavsky Theater Company in Moscow, saying “the context no longer allows me to work calmly.”
“The cessation of all these cultural exchanges and sporting events will be felt by the Russian population,” said Angela E. Stent, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of The World of Putin. “Unfortunately, at the Kremlin level, this will be seen as just another example of the West trying to keep us in a corner.
“This will be part of the victim narrative we heard from Putin at the peak of the last few weeks,” Ms. Stent said. “The boycott affects the people involved in these events, but we are talking about Putin and the few people around him. I’m not sure that will make him change his mind. “
The last time the country’s leaders provoked such a global reaction was in 1980, when the United States, West Germany, Japan and Canada boycotted the Moscow Olympics in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The councils retaliated by skipping the 1984 Games in Los Angeles.
This was during the depths of the Cold War, when Hollywood released jingo films such as Red Dawn about the fictional Soviet invasion of Colorado, and more than 100 million Americans joined The Day After, a television movie about the devastating nuclear exchange between the United States. and the Soviet Union.
The boycott of the Olympic Games had a major impact on popular sentiment, according to Russian experts, as then-Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev had portrayed them as a simulacrum of Soviet power and influence, just as Mr Putin described the invasion of Ukraine as a return. Russian greatness.
“The Soviet government had to explain why the United States and other countries were not there,” said Michael A. McFaul, a former US ambassador to Russia. “This began to affect the way Soviet citizens saw themselves in the world.
Although Russian villains remained a major part of Hollywood, the country’s black-hat image faded after the fall of the communist regime. Younger Russians have grown up in a relatively open, albeit rough, society. Those with money had access to foreign education and European vacations, where the hosts took care of the free Russians.
In Jerusalem, Russian-speaking Israelis flocked to the popular Putin Pub, where the name looked like a lark – no more problematic than the late Russian karaoke at the bar. On Thursday, Russian-born owners removed the golden letters “PUTIN” from its facade and announced they were looking for a new name.
“It was our initiative,” said Julia Kaplan, one of three owners who moved to Israel from St. Petersburg in 1991. “Because we are against the war.”
Israel in its own way serves as an example of the boundaries of this type of boycott. For years, critics of its occupation of the West Bank have sought to put pressure on the government through the boycott, sale, and sanctions movements. Although successful, he opposed people on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian division and failed to pressure consistent Israeli leaders to change their policy toward the Palestinians.
“Such boycotts will certainly not change Putin’s mind,” said Martin C. Indic, a former US ambassador to Israel. “But it will raise the morale of Ukrainians to know that people around the world are on their side. And that will put the oligarchs in place in a way that I suspect financial sanctions will not do. “
However, the reaction will hit ordinary Russians hard. They can no longer fly to London and large parts of the European Union due to bans on Russian flights. Canada closed its airspace to Russian aircraft on Sunday and said it was investigating Russian carrier Aeroflot for violating the restrictions.
“Middle-class Russians have been going to Turkey on holiday for a decade,” Mr McFaul said. “Now they will have to wonder: Will their credit cards work?” Will their money be worth anything? “
In the capitals from Madrid to London, tens of thousands marched in solidarity with the Ukrainians and against the Russian invasion. In Ottawa, the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill, the backdrop of three weeks of truck protests in the Canadian capital, was lit in the colors of the Ukrainian flag.
In Rio de Janeiro, where the invasion coincided with the start of the annual carnival festival, people wore costumes and placards. “Throw acid, not bombs,” said a sign in English.
Understand Russia’s attack on Ukraine
What is the basis of this invasion? Russia considers Ukraine in its natural sphere of influence and is concerned about Ukraine’s proximity to the West and the prospect of the country joining NATO or the European Union. Although Ukraine is not part of either, it receives financial and military assistance from the United States and Europe.
“All this – the sanctions, the applause of football fans for the Ukrainians, the crowds marching in Berlin and Prague – I think it matters because it makes the Russians feel isolated,” Mr McFaul said.
This is likely to deepen some Russian resistance to the invasion, he said, especially among urban, educated elites. These people have access to the Internet and are aware of the contemptuous response to Mr Putin’s aggression. But among those living in more rural areas, where the media is tightly controlled by the government, the reaction against Russia may spark further resentment.
Some cultural institutions have taken action against people who are known for their close ties to Mr Putin. The Metropolitan Opera, for example, said it would no longer work “with artists or institutions that support or are supported by Putin,” said Peter Gelb, Met’s general manager, in a video statement.
This provoked a demonstration of challenge by some Russian artists. Star soprano Anna Netrebko, who is due to appear at the Met in Puccini’s Turandot in April, has tried to distance herself from the Russian invasion. But she also posted on her Instagram account, “it is not right to force artists or any public figure to express their political views and condemn their homeland.”
Not all cultural exchanges have been divided. The blockbuster show of French and Russian paintings at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris remains open.
The exhibition, featuring 200 works collected by two 20th-century Russian textile tycoons, is the result of high-level discussions between French President Emmanuel Macron, Mr Putin and LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault. Both leaders signed contributions to the exhibition’s catalog, and Mr Putin signed loans for the paintings.
For many, however, the idea of supporting Russia is simply unbearable. Pennsylvania, Utah, Ohio, New Hampshire and other states, as well as Canada, withdrew Russian-branded vodka from the shelves of liquor stores.
In some cases, the gesture is inappropriate: Stolichnaya, although historically a Russian brand, is produced in Riga, Latvia. In Brazil, a bar in Sao Paulo renamed its Moscow mule, a drink made in the United States and made with vodka, ginger beer and lime, a UN mule.
“We are not very happy with what Moscow has done, with what Russia has done,” said bar co-owner Mauricio Meireles, a well-known comedian and television presenter in Brazil. “And then we thought of changing the name,” he added. “The UN Mule: The Drink That Doesn’t Attack Anyone.”
The reporting was contributed by Jack Nikas in Rio de Janeiro, Andre Spigariol in Brazil, Aurelien Breeden in Paris, Rafael Minder in Madrid, Elizabeth Povoledo in Rome, Carlotta Gal in Istanbul, Niki Kicantonis in Athens, Vyosa Isai in Ottawa, Livia Albek-Ripka in California and Isabel Kershner to Jerusalem.