Since the partial mobilization and the official declaration of martial law on the occupied Ukrainian territories, Russia's information policy has also abandoned the strategy of suggesting to people at home that the war, which ordinary citizens still cannot call war, is far away.

The deputy chief of the presidential apparatus responsible for Donbass, Sergei Kiriyenko, now predicted that Russia would win the war if it became a "people's war" in which everyone felt involved - in which Kiriyenko invoked the patriotic spirit of World War II.

Kiriyenko, whose name suggests Ukrainian roots, stressed that Russia was not fighting Ukraine, but the NATO countries that wanted to destroy Russia's independence.

In keeping with the new location, the Petersburg Cultural Forum,

which was supposed to demonstrate normality with a large number of patriotic cultural figures from November 10th to 12th, has now been cancelled.

In the "current situation, it is inadmissible," said the Ministry of Culture.

With the same justification, the Ministry of the Interior announced that on "Police Day", November 10, the usual celebrations in honor of the law enforcement officers and repressive apparatuses would be cancelled.

Kerstin Holm

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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The increasingly ferocious hate propaganda also reveals the fascist-genocidal essence of this war, causing embarrassment for the Russian foreign broadcaster RT.

RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan has just announced that it has stopped working with TV journalist Anton Krasovsky after he suggested in a live broadcast that Ukrainian children who did not want to live under Russian rule should be drowned or burned alive.

In the most recent edition of the program "Antonyme", Krassovsky and the science fiction author Sergei Lukyanenko - he also has partly Ukrainian roots - complained that not only ethnic Ukrainians, but also Russians who lived in Ukraine were dealing with the identified Ukrainian state.

On the occasion, Krassowski declared allegations that Russian soldiers were raping Ukrainian women a "hysterical insinuation" and claimed that rather Ukrainian grannies dreamed of being taken by Russian soldiers.

In addition, Krasovsky, who ten years ago led businessman Mikhail Prokhorov's presidential campaign but is now on the European sanctions list for his warmongering, said Ukrainians who did not want to live in a Muscovite state should be shot.

Nobody would buy poetry about the Ukraine war

Simonyan, herself an aggressive propagandist, only commented on Krasovsky's statements about Ukrainian children, which she called "disgusting" and "barbaric".

Krasovsky himself meanwhile apologized to Simonian and to all those who had found his statements barbaric.

After Krassovsky's appearance, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called for a worldwide ban on RT.

Probably more pro forma, the Russian search committee commissioned a legal evaluation of Krassovsky's words.

The Krasovsky case is not the only grief of Simonyan, who hopes to stoke the war enthusiasm of her compatriots with a collection of Russian frontline poems published by RT called "Poezie of the Russian Summer".

The anthology brings together great authors, worthy continuators of World War II literature, assures Simonyan on her Telegram channel.

But the publisher she contacted demanded that the Z symbol – the sign of the Russian war of aggression, which makes many think of a swastika and which is also read as the rune of Russian fascism – be removed, Simonyan complained.

Otherwise, according to the publisher, no bookseller would include it in their range.

Meanwhile, on the home front, the noose of censorship is tightening around culture.

At the Moscow Youth Theater and the Petersburg Alexandrinsky Theater, where dramatizations of Boris Akunin's novels are in the repertoire, the author's name has now had to be removed because he is a staunch critic of the war.

Akunin, who lives in London, expressed his sympathy for theater directors whose work is becoming increasingly difficult as their state's growing insanity.

Akunin, who believes a cultural boycott against Russia was a mistake, said he would not demand that the now "anonymous" pieces be removed.

Bans are a matter for the Putin regime.

According to Akunin, he will not voluntarily break off contact with the Russian audience.

One should fight the dictator, but not the people who would one day overthrow him.