A scandal erupted in the Lithuanian theater because of the “negative image of Ukrainians”

The official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, reported on the scandal at the State Youth Theater of Lithuania. It all started with the fact that the Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa decided to stage a play based on Jonathan Littell’s novel “The Benevolent Ones” there. It was released in France in 2006 and won the Prix Goncourt. This play raises the theme of the events of World War II, including the Holocaust.

However, the theater actors did not like the fact that the play deals, in particular, with the cooperation of ethnic Ukrainians with the Nazis in the destruction of the Jewish population. Zakharova pointed out that as the story progresses, Ukrainian nationalists immediately express their readiness to kill Jewish women and children. At the same time, the German fascists are still pondering how German soldiers and their families will react to the destruction of civilians.

As Zakharova noted in her Telegramchannel, “the historical truth about the massive participation of Ukrainian nationalists in the Holocaust simply does not fit into the pro-Ukrainian propaganda that dominates in the West.”

As a result, Ukraine itself intervened in the scandal. Thus, the director of the Holodomor Museum, Olesya Stasyuk, called on Vilnius to abandon the production and not to create a negative image of Ukrainians in “Ukraine-friendly Lithuania.”

All this led to the fact that the director Loznitsa had to publicly justify himself. He vowed to strongly support Kyiv in its current situation with Russia.

In addition, Zakharova pointed out that the Lithuanians probably also do not want to once again recall “the collaboration of their ancestors with the Nazis in the criminal business of exterminating the Jewish population.” She recalled that of the 200,000 Jewish community that lived in Lithuania during the Nazi occupation, 95% were destroyed “with the active participation of local accomplices of fascism.”

In May, Loznica, who was attending the 75th Cannes Film Festival, said that culture cannot have nationality and citizenship. In this regard, the director called on the world cultural community to abandon the boycott against cultural figures from Russia.