On 20–21 January, as part of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino festival in Florence, which is also funded by European funds, ballerina Svetlana Zakharova, a confidante of Vladimir Putin, is scheduled to perform.
Zakharova is known for her long list of “achievements”, the most notable of which are:
- in 2024 — Putin’s confidante during the presidential campaign;
- since December 2024 — federal official of the Russian Federation, rector of the Moscow State Academy of Choreography;
- former deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation;
- from 2018 to the present — member of the Presidential Council for Culture and Art (included in the updated composition on 7 October 2025);
- member of the United Russia party;
- in 2019, in the sixth year of the war, she received the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, 4th class, from Putin;
- since January 2023, she has been under Ukrainian sanctions for supporting Russian aggression.Poster of Zakharova and Repin's upcoming performance in Florence
Zakharova and her husband, violinist Vadim Repin, receive funding for their projects from the Russian Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives. Her political biography is an integral part of her stage career. While still a member of the State Duma (2007–2011), Zakharova voted for expanding presidential powers, strengthening state control over the media and civil society, and approving a government that reinforced Putin’s personalist rule. She was also among the first signatories of a 2014 letter from cultural figures in support of the annexation of Crimea.
In the current project in Florence, Zakharova is not planning to perform alone, but with a team: Vadim Repin, a violinist who, after 2022, did not publicly distance himself from the Russian authorities and continues to work within the state cultural structures of the Russian Federation, while living in Switzerland and Italy and holding dual citizenship (Russia and Belgium); Artemiy Belyakov — in 2023, he publicly participated in fundraising to support the Russian army; Mikhail Lobukhin — in 2020, he performed in occupied Crimea and was added to the Myrotvorets database; Igor Tsvirko — also performed in Crimea after 2014 and is listed in the Myrotvorets database. In other words, a single project involves a Russian federal official, an artist who financially supported the Russian army, and performers who toured the occupied territories. It is difficult to describe this as a coincidence.
At the time of the appeal (5 January), the Ministry of Culture was unaware of this planned performance, but a representative of the team later commented that “the issue is already being worked on jointly with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs”. The Ukrainian Embassy in Italy has not yet commented on the situation involving Zakharova.
It should be recalled that one of the important symbolic victories of 2025 was the cancellation of conductor Valeriy Gergiev’s performance in Italy. This decision came at the cost of enormous, coordinated efforts by civil society. At the same time, the fact that such cultural “tours” are part of Russia’s hybrid warfare remains insufficiently recognised by a significant part of the European audience.