During the Oscars on Monday night, the documentary film “Navalny” won the most prestigious award for its genre. Russian Alexei Navalny was accused of an attempted murder with the nerve agent novichok in 2020. He believes that persons connected to the Russian security service FSB were behind it. Navalny received hospital treatment in Germany, then traveled to his homeland, where he was arrested. He has been sentenced to 11 years in prison for embezzlement, but claims himself that the debts are false. The film “Navalny” is about Navalny’s fight against the Russian authoritarian regime, and was produced for CNN. Alexei Navalny still keeps in touch with the world on Twitter. Photo: Pavel Golovkin The Ukrainian journalist Kate Tsurkan says many believe that the Oscar Academy showed “open hypocrisy” when it selected the film as the winner. – The problem here is not that a documentary about Navalny won an Oscar. That is the attitude of the Russian opposition in general, says her column in the Kyiv Independent. – Ukrainians all over the world are furious, she writes. Among the Ukrainian critics are politicians, entertainment profiles and journalists, and the argument revolves around the Russian invasion war. No to presidential speech Last week it became known that the Oscar Academy had refused to allow Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyj to speak to the assembly through a video link on the big screen, writes Variety. The magazine reports that the producer of the award ceremony, Will Packer, claimed that the war only received attention from the West because those affected by it are white. A Ukrainian user says he is shocked that Navalny’s wife was allowed to speak on stage, but not Volodymyr Zelenskyi. This was said last year, which was the first time the academy turned down Zelenskyj’s speech. Since then, the Ukrainian president has addressed audiences at the Cannes Film Festival, the Grammys and Golden Globes, and rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange. The organizers did not want to comment on the matter to the magazine, but told Deadline that they wanted to stay away from politics during the ceremony this year. Nevertheless, Chinese shoemaker Donnie Yen, who has links to the Chinese Communist Party, was allowed to present an award. One of the competitors in the documentary category was “A house made of wooden tiles”, which is about Ukraine in wartime. Director Azad Safarov reacted like this in a long post on Facebook: – We got it proven once again that Russian propaganda works really well, and knows how to bring out heroes where heroes don’t exist, he writes. – So we still have a job to do. Director Azad Safarov together with a member of the Ukrainian film crew at the Oscars. Martyr or villain? Some of the critics refer to Alexei Navalny’s statements when he was an opposition politician in Russia. In an interview with Ekho Moskvy in 2014, he said this: – Despite the fact that Crimea was annexed and it was an open violation of all international norms, I still believe that Crimea is in reality now part of the Russian Federation. – Let’s not fool ourselves, and I strongly recommend that Ukrainians don’t fool themselves either. Crimea will remain part of Russia. An activist from Crimea points to Navalny’s statements that the peninsula should continue to be part of Russia, and says that Crimea should be liberated instead of him. Natalia Moen-Larsen is a senior researcher at the Norwegian Foreign Policy Institute (Nupi), and has researched Navalny’s past. – When there is war, the other party’s positions become very polarized. For many Ukrainians, Navalny no longer represents anyone in Russian politics, she says. – This again underpins a point about collective responsibility for the war in Ukraine, which rests on all Russians. She nevertheless says that Navalny has some “skeletons in the closet”, such as a video where he compares immigrants to cockroaches, among other things. – His nationalism was very anti-foreign. He imagined that it was the Russian group against the Muslim “others”. The people he talked about the most on his blog were Chechens, actually. Natalia Moen-Larsen is a senior researcher at Nupi. Photo: NUPI Moen-Larsen says he has never explicitly distanced himself from such statements, but gradually talked less about other ethnic groups and immigration as he became better known in Russia. – For the democratically oriented part of the Russian people who use the internet, he is a symbol of a different Russia and a martyr, right now. But for many others, he is probably a villain. – The fact that he traveled back and fights against the Russian system as he does, you cannot erase the value of it. When there is a war, everything becomes so polarized. – Against all Russians Jørn Holm-Hansen is a senior researcher at NIBR at Oslo Met., and researches Ukrainian and Russian politics. – Navalny has a somewhat checkered past when it comes to the relationship with the International Court of Justice, he says, and refers to his comments about Crimea. – But he has clearly distanced himself from the full-scale invasion that we had last year, and he has asked people to go out and demonstrate against the war. Holm-Hansen believes that the criticism that comes against Alexei Navalny from some Ukrainian circles after the award ceremony is due to the fact that he is Russian, and not to his actions. Jørn Holm-Hansen is a senior researcher at NIBR, Oslo Met. Photo: Privat / He points out that there were also strong reactions when the Russian human rights organization Memorial won the Nobel Peace Prize last year. – There is a wing in Ukrainian politics and social life that is making a lot of noise now. They are against all Russians and everything Russian. They also reject the Russians who support Ukraine and oppose Putin, says Holm-Hansen. – If you are going to reject people on ethnic grounds and on the basis of what kind of citizen you are, regardless of what you stand for and what you sacrifice for your own safety and comfort, then you are on a wild road as I see it. Then break some basic principle.
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Ukrainian profiles “furious” after the Navalny documentary won an Oscar – news Urix – Foreign news and documentaries
