The Kremlin has invested enormous effort in blacklisting writers, film directors, and singers who left Russia protesting Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, yet a new move by the great film-maker Andrei Zvyagintsev has generated widespread admiration in the motherland.
Minotaur is an antiwar film about a Russian provincial businessman called upon by the local mayor to give up 14 men for the war, with or without their consent, to meet a Moscow-imposed quota. He eventually comes up with a nasty scheme to lure men into the war by deception.
It’s safe to say Minotaur was not the kind of film Putin hoped to encourage when he launched a government-sponsored program to promote “patriotic” films and books about the war in Ukraine. Yet even critics writing for Kremlin-controlled media found it difficult to ignore the latest work of the country’s most internationally acclaimed director.
“There’s a feeling that Andrey Zvyagintsev will be rewarded at Cannes this time too. He’s gained both skill and wisdom,” said Moskovsky Komsomolets, one of the most popular Russian dailies.
Indeed, Zvyagintsev, who now lives in exile in France, won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival at the end of May. In his acceptance speech, he called on Putin to stop the “senseless war” in Ukraine. That infuriated Putin’s sycophants and caused a wave of anger from the Kremlin’s pro-war bloggers. The current salience of the director’s views was even implicitly recognized by the Kremlin, with Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov forced to respond to Zvyagintsev’s appeal.
And that appears to be a significant breach in the information fortress the Kremlin has been trying to build through measures ranging from propaganda and repression of dissenting voices to outright and ever-more aggressive censorship. The growing number of internet shutdowns across Russia is only the latest step in the Kremlin’s strategic campaign to restrict the population’s ability to communicate freely beyond the state’s control.
Russia is now a major front in a new global arms race to shut down the free flow of information — one that pits authoritarian regimes such as Russia against democratic societies. This conflict is unlikely to be decided by a single technological breakthrough or even result in a decisive victory by either side, but instead will become a long and exhausting struggle, measured not in months but in years.
In Russia, this campaign is unfolding against a media landscape that has changed dramatically since 2022. On one side stands the pro-Kremlin media, pro-war voices on social media, internet censors, and security services that are busy identifying and punishing dissent. On the other hand, there are Russian independent media, since 2022, most of them in exile, along with networks of activists and independent journalists still operating inside the country.
At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Russian media-in-exile and their networks inside the country scored several major successes. When the invasion began in February 2022, millions of Russians turned to media-in-exile in disgust at Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, hoping to make sense of what was happening and, in some cases, treating their turn to journalists abroad as a form of collective but private resistance to what they saw as an unjust and unprovoked war.
Later the same year, even more Russians turned to foreign-based media when the Kremlin announced mobilization, bringing almost every Russian family within reach of a state suddenly hungry for cannon fodder. Access to independent information became a matter of self-preservation.
As a result, media in exile, such as TV Dozhd and Meduza, emerged as the most trusted voices for anti-war Russians — inside the country and abroad — but also a vehicle for sharing information and, to a significant extent, as a source of collective identity.
Four and a half years into the war, the picture has changed. Anti-war Russians inside the country have not been converted to the Kremlin’s cause, nor have they abandoned their anti-Putin views. But many have become exhausted by an endless stream of bad news — which means all news about the war.
As war fatigue has grown, Russian media-in-exile are struggling to function as an information service about the most important issue of the day — the war itself. Their audiences are increasingly turning away from such coverage, choosing ignorance as a form of psychological self-defense. When they feel compelled to check the news — for instance, after a drone attack in their town — many turn to social media instead. Russian media-in-exile still exist, but no longer have the same prominence.
There is, however, one sphere that continues to resonate on both sides of Russia’s borders: culture and the arts.
By mid-2026, it is clear that culture remains fully capable of triggering a genuine national conversation among Russians — both inside the country and abroad. When Mr Nobody Against Putin — an anti-war documentary filmed in a Siberian school by a teacher who later fled to the West with the footage — won an Oscar, it sparked heated debate both inside Russia and throughout the émigré community.
It works both ways: Lev Danilkin’s book about the director of the Pushkin Museum, which includes an account of her hiding German masterpieces seized by the Red Army in 1945, led to a passionate discussion not just in Russia, but throughout the émigré community.
Many on both sides of the border followed first with concern and then with anger the fate of an 18-year-old busker, Naoko, who was arrested for performing anti-war songs by Monetochka and Noize MC — two famous Russian singers now living in exile — on the streets of her native St. Petersburg for a crowd of young Russians. Videos of her performances went viral online.
When she was eventually released and left Russia, she made a surprise appearance at a concert in Vilnius in December, performing alongside Monetochka and Noize MC. That deeply emotional performance conveyed a strong resonance to many Russians, wherever they lived.
Just as in the days of the Cold War, culture — books, films, documentaries, and music — has once again become the framework for a national debate about the things that really matter, above all, the war.
Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov are Non-resident Senior Fellows with the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). They are Russian investigative journalists and co-founders of Agentura.ru, a watchdog of Russian secret service activities. Their book Our Dear Friends in Moscow, The Inside Story of a Broken Generation was published in 2025.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
