The Kremlin has dismissed a call for peace made by well-known Russian director Andrei Zvyagintsev at the Cannes Film Festival.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday that Zvyagintsev had never spoken out against the Ukrainian government’s persecution of the Russian population in Donbass since 2014, and therefore had no right to comment on the matter now, Russian news agencies reported.
Moscow has justified its war against Ukraine by citing the alleged oppression of the Russian-speaking population in the neighbouring country.
The director, who was honoured in Cannes with the Grand Jury Prize for his film “Minotaur,” had appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin in his speech to end the war.
“The whole world is waiting for it,” said Zvyagintsev, who went into exile after the outbreak of the war.
Kremlin spokesman Peskov, for his part, stated that he would not inform Putin of this appeal. “I don’t think anyone will do that,” he added.
At the same time, Peskov rejected Western criticism of the Russian attack on the Ukrainian capital Kiev at the weekend, during which a new Oreshnik medium-range ballistic missile was also deployed.
Putin had ordered the shelling in response to a Ukrainian attack on a residential building in the Russian-controlled town of Starobilsk in the Donbass region, which left more than 20 people dead.
Peskov complained that Western politicians had previously failed to condemn the Ukrainian attack on the residential building. According to the General Staff in Kiev, the attack on Starobilsk targeted a military unit.
