Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a decree on Friday that has imposed sanctions on five Russian cultural figures who are involved with organizing the Russian Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale. The news was first reported by UA News.
They include Anastasia Karneeva, who is the commissioner of this year’s Russian Pavilion, and Mikhail Shvydkoy, Russia’s delegate for international cultural exchanges and a former culture minister.
In a release about the decree, the Ukrainian government characterized them as “figures who justify the aggression and spread Russian propaganda at international events. All of them are linked to the aggressor state’s participation in the 61st Venice Biennale.”
The Venice Biennale said in March that no sanctions had been broken. ARTnews has reached out to the Biennale for comment about these new sanctions.
In its March 4 announcement of the national pavilions, the Biennale said that it “rejects any form of exclusion or censorship of culture and art” and that “La Biennale, like the city of Venice, continues to be a place of dialogue, openness, and artistic freedom, encouraging connections between peoples and cultures, with enduring hope for the cessation of conflicts and suffering.”
Last month, Shvydkoy told ARTnews that the Russian Pavilion will go on as planned despite any sanctions that might be levied ahead of the Biennale’s opening in May. “Various sanctions may be devised, and official Western institutions may be prohibited from working with us, but no one can deprive Russia of the right to artistic self-expression,” he said.
The sanctions also affect violinist Valeria Oleinik, singer Ilya Tatakov, and vocalist Artem Nikolaev. Tatakov and Nikolaev are listed as participants via the Intrada Ensemble; the ensemble’s seven other members are not sanctioned. (The pavilion’s artist lists includes Valerie Oleynik, likely a different English spelling of Oleinik.) The exhibition, titled “The tree is rooted in the sky,” includes more than 30 participants, though only these three have been sanctioned.
Ukraine’s press release about the sanctions noted that Oleinik has visited the Crimean Peninsula since 2014 in support of its occupation by Russia, while Nikolaev “participated in propaganda events in Crimea” in 2025. Tatakov allegedly “took part in the creation of a propaganda film in the temporarily occupied territories of the Donetsk region to promote the ideas of the ‘Russian world,’” according to the release.
“Russia’s participation in the Venice Biennale is not about culture – it is about using international platforms to legitimize aggression and spread propaganda,” Vladyslav Vlasiuk, an adviser to Zelenskyy on the country’s sanctions policy, said in a statement. “Either you oppose the Russian regime and have access to the cultural space of the free world, or you serve propaganda, face sanctions, and take part in the ‘Cucumber’ festival.”
Russia has not participated in the Biennale since its war against Ukraine began in 2022, when the artists selected for the festival that year withdrew. In 2024, it gave over its pavilion in the Giardini to Bolivia.
Russia’s planned participation in the Biennale has been routinely criticized by figures in both the art world and politics. Shortly after it was first announced, Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha said in social media post that the Biennale “must not become a stage for whitewashing the war crimes that Russia commits daily against the Ukrainian people and our cultural heritage.”
Several members of the European Parliament have called on the EU to withhold funding from the Biennale because of Russia’s participation, and Venice mayor Luigi Brugnaro said last month, “If the Russian government were to carry out propaganda, we would be the first to close the pavilion.”
