A week before the Oscars, in February, I was on a date in New York City. We were talking about Sean Baker’s film “Anora,” which is about an American sex worker who marries the spoiled son of a Russian oligarch. Having already won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, the film was now set to become an Oscars darling, with one of its leads — the Russian Yura Borisov — nominated for Best Supporting Actor. My date, who is from Moscow, was thrilled. She said she was rooting for Borisov. When I asked what she liked about his performance, she admitted she hadn’t seen the movie.
So why was she supporting him? Her answer was simple: “I always root for our own.”
The knee-jerk Russian patriotism sparked by the runaway success of “Anora,” which swept several major categories at the Academy Awards, including Best Picture, taps into the country’s impatience and fury at being cut off from the West since Russia’s tanks rolled into Ukraine three years ago. It doesn’t seem to matter that Baker and the film are not Russian, but American. The fact that a Russian like Borisov is succeeding at all in the West is nothing short of a national victory for Moscow.
The full-scale invasion of Ukraine prompted wide-ranging sanctions on Russia, managing to freeze half its currency reserves in Western clearing houses, ban imports of its oil and impose restrictions on its gas. Hundreds of Western companies pulled out of Russia. Ordinary Russians could no longer watch a Disney flick or buy an IKEA desk, at least not legally. Moscow responded by enacting a sophisticated sanctions-evading scheme, importing new BMWs from Germany by listing them on import records as used cars from Kyrgyzstan and smuggling and pirating the latest Hollywood releases by legally billing them as commercials so cinema chains wouldn’t be charged with tax evasion.
Many Russians took greater umbrage at the canceling of their culture; Russian films, music, sports teams and opinions were no longer welcome in the West. They bemoaned the fact that the Olympic Games would no longer have the Russian “Sports House” and its infamous parties, or that Europe would no longer host the Bolshoi Theater, or that President Vladimir Putin’s friend Valery Gergiev would no longer conduct at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Kremlin mouthpieces cried Russophobia. Russia even tried to dodge cultural sanctions: At least three ballet troupes have pretended to be Ukrainian in order to perform abroad. One of them, which called itself the “Ballet of Ukraine,” toured Sweden late last year, performing “The Nutcracker.” Payments for the performance went to a Swiss firm run by a former Russian banker.
Many in Russia felt that countering the West’s sanctions, rather than the bombing raids on Ukrainian kindergartens, was the actual war their country was engaged in. Much like everything else, Russian actors, singers and athletes — people who’ve never held a gun — became weapons in that war, even if inadvertently.
Now, with President Donald Trump’s rapprochement with Moscow, the success of “Anora,” Russian athletes breaking records and even a viral hit by the Ay Yola pop group from remote Bashkortostan, the cultural isolation surrounding Russia has eased. The mood in Moscow is unmistakably triumphant; the Russians seem to be saying, “We’re back.”
A Cinderella story with themes of class war, female empowerment and, to a lesser degree, the immigrant experience, “Anora” is unmistakably American. It nonetheless features a Russian-speaking cast and scenes of Russians, in modern slangy dialogue, stomping through New York. Exiled Russian film critic Anton Dolin told New Lines, “Many in Russia are happy that our guys are on screen, that the entire world saw them and praised their talent. It’s a patriotic kind of happiness, it has nothing to do with the movie itself.”
At the official level, the unflattering depictions of Russians received mixed reviews. In a piece called “The Nature of Depravity,” influential daily newspaper Kommersant didn’t overly criticize “Anora” but, in the Russian cultural tradition of forgoing empathy for symbolism, cited “humanism and compassion for marginalized minorities” as the reason for the film’s success. Film director-turned-Kremlin-propagandist Nikita Mikhalkov, who won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 1994, went further: “What’s the film about? A repulsive oligarch, a repulsive wife, a scumbag son, and a gangster — but a humane one, and of course, he’s Russian,” he said at a forum outside Moscow. “Well, thanks a lot,” he added with sarcasm.
But while some of those close to the government were turned off, ordinary Russians reveled in such portrayals of their compatriots. Their enthusiasm — the film was one of the few American movies to be shown nationwide in Russian cinemas — was reminiscent of the pride previously drummed up for the “Brother” franchise made some 25 years ago. “For a long time during the Cold War there was this image perpetuated [in the West] of how bad the Russians were,” said Dolin from the Latvian capital of Riga. The author of a seminal book on the “bad Russians” of Russian cinema, Dolin described how Russians identify with villains. “When the iron curtain fell and we saw the way we were portrayed, we were, ‘Wow, yes, we’re exactly like that — ushanka hats, AK-47s and all,’” he said.
In the 1990s, as Russia struggled — and often failed — to feed its citizens and contain rampant organized crime, it found a folk hero in “Brother,” whose protagonist, Danila Bagrov, is a Chechen War veteran and hitman. In the first film, released in 1997, Bagrov, a charming, soft-spoken 20-something, comes to St. Petersburg, then known as “Saint Chicago” for its mafia wars, where he’s hired by his brother, an already established hitman, to take out local thugs. Bagrov, possessing a Rambo-esque ability to turn everything into a weapon, navigates the city’s post-Soviet chaos with a mix of deadpan calm and moral absolutism. He kills without hesitation but spares those he deems innocent, delivering justice according to his own opaque code.
In “Brother 2,” released a few years later, Bagrov is in America, trying to take vengeance against American businesspeople and Ukrainian mobsters who extorted and killed his compatriots — all while lecturing them on moral superiority. One sequence includes him going into a Chicago office building and shooting unarmed Americans. The film quickly topped the charts in Russia. Two decades after “Brother 2” was released, a quote from the film, “The strength lies in truth,” became a semiofficial slogan for Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Now, with the success of “Anora,” Ukrainian media outlets have painted Borisov as a propagandist for his portrayal of Russia’s most famous poet, Alexander Pushkin, and his previous role in “AK-47,” a Russian biopic about the gun’s inventor, Mikhail Kalashnikov. While nothing indicates he is a Kremlin supporter, Borisov and his Russian co-star Mark Eydelshteyn have not publicly condemned or condoned Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Their notable silence is similar to that of the Russian hockey player Alex Ovechkin, the 39-year-old captain of the Washington Capitals team. In early April, Russia notched up what many saw as its biggest sports victory in years when Ovechkin scored his 896th goal against the New York Islanders, surpassing Wayne Gretzky to become the all-time leading scorer in the National Hockey League (NHL).
Many Russian nationals play in the NHL, but what’s striking about Ovechkin is his overt pro-Kremlin politics. In 2017, the Washington, D.C., resident launched “PutinTeam,” a social movement supporting Putin during his 2018 reelection campaign. Following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Ovechkin called for peace without directly condemning the invasion or criticizing Putin, whom he referred to as “my president.” On the ice rink, after a prerecorded video with athletes LeBron James and Michael Phelps congratulating the hockey star, Ovechkin said, “Russians, we did it.”
Afterward, Kremlin-affiliated political scientist Sergei Markov wrote on social media: “Ovechkin has shown many times he is not afraid and not ashamed of being Russian, even when Russians have been bullied for being Russian. This is another thing that everyone in Russia is grateful to Ovechkin for, as well as the respect he has won in the world — not just for the hockey.”
And for many in Russia, Ovechkin’s record was seen as a chance to mend relations with the United States. “Hockey is something that unites us. That’s how it’s always been,” said a sports journalist with a major Russian publication who wished to remain anonymous due to security concerns. “Ovechkin is a symbolic figure right now, in both countries — a true giant,” the journalist added, saying that now Washington and Moscow could potentially agree to hold games, or friendly matches, between the NHL and the Russian hockey league, the KHL, something not seen since the 1972 Hockey Summit Series between Canada and the Soviet Union.
“Anora” and Ovechkin’s record were unexpected wins. But the biggest victory came from Trump’s sudden rapprochement with Russia. All of a sudden, the country that launched the bloodiest war in Europe since World War II was, if not a friend, then definitely not a foe of the United States. Countless overtures have been made to Russia since Trump returned to office at the start of the year. There are no new U.S. weapons packages planned for Ukraine, Trump’s administration seems to avoid criticizing Moscow — even after its forces bomb playgrounds — and the U.S. president has even floated the idea of inviting Russia back to the G7. While Russia didn’t offer anything in return, it did almost immediately tone down anti-American rhetoric on state TV, and Russian officials turned their ire toward Europe.
More importantly, Washington’s about-face on Russia seems to have opened doors for Russians to come back to the world stage. Anna Netrebko — the internationally acclaimed Russian-Austrian soprano — is set to return to London’s Royal Opera House to open the 2025-26 season with Puccini’s “Tosca.” This would mark her first appearance at Covent Garden in six years. Netrebko’s career has been marked by both artistic acclaim and controversy due to her past support for Putin and her support of pro-Russian separatist activities in Ukraine. Later this year, she’s set to sing with Palm Beach Opera, her first U.S. performance in five years.
On July 4, as is the tradition, the Boston Philharmonic will play Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture right before Independence Day fireworks. Marvel is set to release “Thunderbolts,” a film featuring several Russian superheroes — all played by Western actors. Steven Soderbergh’s latest film, “Black Bag,” which was released earlier this year, centers around a Russian spy. Showtime’s tentpole TV series, “The Agency,” starring Michael Fassbender and Richard Gere, shuttles between London and the front line of the war in Ukraine. The only countries that are standing by their decision to cancel Russia altogether are Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states. But even in Ukraine, this month’s top single on Apple Music belonged to Bashkir ethno-pop band Ay Yola, whose members openly support the invasion. It is hard to imagine a better gift for Russian propaganda.
In March, when Moscow’s forces were pushing Ukrainians out of Kursk in southern Russia, they used a massive pipeline built for delivering cheap gas to Europe to sneak behind Ukrainian lines. Despite the fact that many Russians died inside that pipe, ironically named Druzhba, or “Friendship,” the operation was declared a victory. The image is a fitting metaphor for the Kremlin’s strategy of weaponizing everything — whether it’s culture, sport or energy. It’s a war, and Russians will always root for their own.
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