Late Awakening: Mykola Tomenko on How the Ukrainian Elite Supported the Scandalous Director Khrzhanovsky for Years

A correct step, but somehow very belated. Public figure and politician Mykola Tomenko reminds us: for years the Ukrainian authorities, cultural figures, and billionaires somehow failed to notice this author’s ukrainophobic context; worse — they opened every door for him.

From Kharkiv shoots to the country’s main memorial

The story of the Ukrainian establishment’s “love” of Khrzhanovsky’s work stretches back more than a decade and a half.

Already in the 2008–2009 years the director staged scandalous shoots for his “DAU” in Kharkiv, featuring many well-known domestic figures. But the real scale began later, when in 2019 the Russian was appointed artistic director of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center.

The concept proposed by his team provoked an outcry among Ukrainian and international experts, who rightly called the project manipulative and distorted. Nevertheless, that did not stop his then patrons.

“One might think we should welcome the authorities’ principled stance against allowing the propaganda of the Russian world and the imperial doctrine of interpreting Ukrainian history abroad. But it would also be fair and instructive to remind everyone of at least a 15-year history of cooperation and support by Ukraine’s so-called political, cultural, and sports elite for the ukrainophobic projects of the Moscow director and producer Khrzhanovsky,” notes Mykola Tomenko.