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20 minutes ago
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Putin's friend Gergiev set to conduct as Italy breaks ban on pro-Kremlin artists
Russian conductor Valery Gergiev has been barred from European stages ever since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. A close ally of Vladimir Putin for many years, the director of the Bolshoi and Mariinsky Russian state theatres has never spoken out against the war. But a region of southern Italy has now invited Gergiev back to Europe, signalling the artist's rehabilitation even as Russia's attacks on Ukraine intensify. Vincenzo de Luca, who runs the Campania region, insists that the concert at the Un'Estate da RE festival later this month will go ahead despite a growing swell of criticism. "Culture… must not be influenced by politics and political logic," De Luca said in a livestream on Friday. "We do not ask these men to answer for the choices made by politicians." The 76-year-old local leader has previously called Europe's broad veto on pro-Putin artists "a moment of stupidity – a moment of madness" at the start of the war and announced that he was "proud" to welcome Gergiev to town. But Pina Picierno, a vice-president of the European Parliament, has told the BBC that allowing Gergiev's return is "absolutely unacceptable". She calls the star conductor a "cultural mouthpiece for Putin and his crimes". Ukrainian human rights activist and Nobel laureate Oleksandra Matviichuk said the invitation by the regional government was "hypocrisy", rather than neutrality. Russian opposition activists have also condemned the director's sudden return. The Anti-Corruption Foundation, of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny, wants his concert cancelled and is calling on Italy's interior ministry to ban Gergiev's entry to the country. Before Russia's full-scale war in Ukraine, the virtuoso Gergiev was a regular visitor to stages in Italy and across Europe, despite his closeness to Putin. His long and illustrious career includes stints at the London Symphony Orchestra and Munich Philharmonic. But the invitations to Europe stopped abruptly on 24 February 2022. Hours before the first Russian missiles were launched at Ukraine, Gergiev was on stage at Milan's La Scala opera house. Urged then by the city's mayor to speak out against the war, Gergiev chose silence. He was promptly dropped from the bill. Abandoned by his manager, despite calling Gergiev "the greatest conductor alive", he was then fired as chief conductor in Munich and removed from concert schedules across the continent. That's why the invitation from Italy is so controversial. Pina Picierno, who is from the Campania region herself, says her call to stop the event is not Russophobic. "There is no shortage of brilliant Russian artists who choose to disassociate themselves from Putin's criminal policies," she told the BBC. The European MP, who says she has received threats for her work exposing Russia's hybrid warfare, warns that allowing Gergiev to perform would be both wrong and dangerous. "This is not about censorship. Gergiev is part of a deliberate Kremlin strategy. He is one of their cultural envoys to soften Western public opinion. This is part of their war." The cultural controversy erupted in a week when Italy was hosting heads of state from all over Europe to reaffirm their support for Ukraine and discuss how to rebuild the country once the war is over. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has been a strong and consistent critic of Vladimir Putin from the start. But her culture ministry is one of the backers of Un'Estate da RE, which has invited Gergiev. A senior MP from Meloni's Brothers of Italy party, Alfredo Antoniozzi, has described Gergiev as "simply a great artist". "If Russians have to pay for the mistakes of their president, then we are committing a kind of cultural genocide," he argued. Last month, Canada formally barred Gergiev from entry and declared it would freeze any assets. But the European Union has shied away from formal sanctions against the conductor, who has avoided voicing open support for the war. Gergiev has been a vocal supporter of Putin since the 1990s, later campaigning for his re-election and backing Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014. He was handed management of Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre, in addition to the Mariinsky Theatre, taking over from a director who signed an open letter against Russia's war. Gergiev is a state employee, but in 2022 an investigation by Alexei Navalny's team uncovered properties in several Italian cities that they say he never declared. They also alleged he used donations to a charitable fund to pay for his own lavish lifestyle. The activists argued that was Gergiev's reward for his public loyalty to Putin. The BBC has so far been unable to reach the conductor for comment. A spokeswoman for the European Commission, Eva Hrncirova, has clarified that the Un'Estate da RE festival is not receiving EU cash: it is financed by Italy's own "cohesion funds". But she added that the commission urged European stages not to give space "to artists who support the war of aggression in Ukraine". In Campania, the artistic director who crafted this year's festival programme declined to comment. A spokesman was confident Gergiev's performance would go ahead, though – despite the controversy. "Yes," he assured the BBC. "For sure." Additional reporting from Rome by Davide Ghiglione. Putin's favourite conductor to run Bolshoi Russian conductor resigns Edinburgh Festival post
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
North Korea reaffirms support for Russia's war in Ukraine
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un offered Moscow his "unconditional support" on the war in Ukraine, according to Pyongyang state media reports. In talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in North Korea, Kim said that Pyongyang stood by "all the measures taken by the Russian leadership" to tackle the "root cause of the Ukrainian crisis". Western officials believe Pyongyang has sent an estimated 11,000 troops to Russia over the last year to fight against Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. According to North Korean state media KCNA news agency, Kim and Lavrov met on Saturday in "an atmosphere full of warm comradely trust". The North Korean leader also expressed a "firm belief that the Russian army and people would surely win victory in accomplishing the sacred cause of defending the dignity and basic interests of the country". On Telegram, Russia's foreign ministry posted a video showing the two men shaking hands and greeting each other with a hug. Lavrov also met with his North Korean counterpart Choe Son Hui and thanked the "heroic" North Korean soldiers deployed to aid Russia, Russia's TASS news agency reported. North Korea's renewed military support for Russia comes as US President Donald Trump has resumed military supplies to Ukraine, after a brief hiatus. Trump told NBC News on Thursday that he had made a deal with Nato for the US to send Patriot air defence systems to Ukraine via the alliance, after a surge of Russian aerial attacks. Pyongyang first publicly acknowledged sending troops to Russia in April, months after Ukraine and the West revealed the large-scale troop movement from North Korea to the Russian-Ukrainian frontline. Kim signed an accord with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in June last year, agreeing to support each other if either country was dealing with "aggression". Apart from soldiers, North Korea also promised to send thousands of workers to help rebuild Russia's war-torn Kursk region, Moscow's security chief said last month. N Korea confirms it sent troops to fight for Russia in Ukraine war North Korea has sent more troops to Russia, South's spy agency says Why did Putin's Russia invade Ukraine?
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
South Korea cut a deal with Trump. It didn't matter.
In 2018, South Korea handed President Donald Trump the first trade victory of his administration. Under the agreement, new South Korean steel export restrictions were put in place and more U.S. automakers could export their cars to South Korea. The president hailed it as "a historic milestone," a "great deal for American and Korean workers" and a "fair and reciprocal" deal. That was probably overselling what amounted to a modest rewrite of a pre-existing trade agreement, but South Korea was happy to play along if it meant buying peace and quiet. When Trump took office in January, South Korea seemed well-positioned to weather the looming tariffs the president was eager to implement. But it was not to be. Earlier this week, Trump announced he would impose a 25% tariff on South Korean exports starting Aug. 1, unless its government agreed to even more concessions. The new threat sent a message that resonated far beyond Seoul: Trump can't be trusted. Foreign leaders have already noticed that nobody is safe from the mercurial temperament of the U.S. president and his endless appetite for tariffs and and a light-switch approach to flipping them on and off. So far in his second term, Trump has broken more trade deals than forged new ones, and the goalposts are constantly moving. The president inked a sweeping deal with Canada and Mexico in his first term, then turned around and launched another trade war earlier this year. The behavior might earn the 'dealmaker-in-chief' a new nickname: the 'dealbreaker-in-chief.' On Monday, Trump blasted out letters to over a dozen trade partners threatening to reimpose tariffs on Aug. 1 if they didn't cut new trade agreements. South Korea was among the countries put on notice for a 25% tariff, and more are being posted on social media through the week. 'We invite you to participate in the extraordinary Economy of the United States, the Number One Market in the World, by far,' Trump said in the letter addressed to South Korean President Lee Jae-myung. Notably, the president left wiggle room to adjust the tariffs up or down based on his feelings about the outcome of the negotiations. It was a far cry from the trade agreement with South Korea in 2007, the U.S.'s first bilateral trade pact with a major Asian power, negotiated over 10 months under the second Bush administration in an environment where free trade was ascendant in both parties. It went into force five years later. While Washington viewed that deal as key to its approach to the Pacific, the current fight is just one of dozens that Trump has started in recent weeks on large and small nations alike. South Korean officials are working hard to come up with an agreement that would please Trump, but progress has stalled as there's little clarity on what he even wants as the endgame. 'We are doing our best to bring about a result mutually beneficial to both sides, but we have been unable to establish what each side exactly wanted from the other side,' Lee said last week. While past presidents viewed South Korea as a valuable military ally against North Korea, an isolated totalitarian state that occasionally makes threats against the U.S., Trump sees it as a freeloader taking advantage of incompetent American leadership. In his first term he referred to the updated 2012 trade agreement with South Korea as "a horrible deal" and "a Hillary Clinton disaster" that was a "one-way street." South Korea will probably have to accept the fact that Trump's idea of a good trade deal is a one-way street in his favor. The Trump administration touted a new accord with Vietnam last week that kept a 20% tariff on Vietnamese imports while clearing the way for U.S. exports to Vietnam to face no import taxes. Stephen Miran, a Trump economic adviser, praised it as an 'extremely one-sided' deal. But that doesn't mean it's a good deal for the U.S. exactly. After all, it's U.S. companies that will be forced to pay those tariffs. For smaller businesses that have long worked with Vietnamese counterparts to, say, build the furniture that they sell, the trade deal locks in higher prices for the near future and years of hassle as they try to reorient their supply chains. Trump has brought back mercantilism, the outdated economic theory that a nation's wealth and power were measured by exporting more than it imported. The U.S. and other world powers largely moved away from that model and toward more and more free trade after the Great Depression and World War II, when they realized that trade barriers hurt more than they helped. Anti-tax conservative activist Grover Norquist summed it up in a discussion of tariffs at an April event with journalist Steve Clemons. 'In trade wars, all the casualties are friendly,' he said. 'Everybody doesn't shoot across World War I trenches at other guys. They shoot down the trench at their own team.' This article was originally published on
