Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, pictured in Brussels in December 2021, was an actor before he turned to politics and has been a master of using media to communicate and inspire Ukrainians and garner support from the west for his country’s defence against the Russian invasion.  Photo: Alexandros Michailidis/Shutterstock.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, pictured in Brussels in December 2021, was an actor before he turned to politics and has been a master of using media to communicate and inspire Ukrainians and garner support from the west for his country’s defence against the Russian invasion.  Photo: Alexandros Michailidis/Shutterstock.

Planning the April edition of Delano magazine was not straightforward, as we debated to what extent and how to cover Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, given its impact on people, local energy prices, politics and more. Not to mention the situation was changing daily…

But the heinous attack on Ukraine has once again highlighted the difficulty in separating art and sport from politics. The sanctions, finally, imposed by the UK government on Chelsea football club owner Roman Abramovich have hurt the club and its fans, for example. Do the fans deserve to suffer? Well, they sure didn’t complain when their team won countless domestic and European competitions thanks to the spending spree backed by Abramovich’s wealth (which some would say was ill-gained).

Here in Luxembourg, several culture commentators were outraged when the Luxembourg City Film Festival took the difficult decision to withdraw Russian films from its programme in early March, following an open letter to festivals around the world from the Ukrainian film academy. The Russian filmmakers are innocent victims of censorship, the commentators cried from the comfort of their sofas, while Ukrainians were being slaughtered, and mothers and their children fled their homeland.

One Ukrainian filmmaker, Marina Stepanska, later summed up her profession’s position as her colleagues moved from making feature films to documenting Russian war crimes with their cameras. “Let me give you a hint on how to distinguish the real victims of Putin’s regime,” she wrote. “It’s very simple. All the victims are in Russian prisons already. They did have balls to speak out against this war during the first days, and they have since been arrested. The victims are already paying a price in prison, and they don’t have the ability to present so-called ‘independent art’ on your platforms.”

Indeed, culture--including the media--should take a stand when a sovereign country is invaded. Media goes hand in hand with culture: fostering information and awareness, speaking to hearts and minds. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky--famously an actor before he turned to politics--has been a master of using media and social media platforms to communicate and inspire Ukrainians and garner support from the west for his country’s defence against the Russian invasion. 

As an independent media house, our team has been rocked by the cowardly Russian invasion of Ukraine, and we’ve tried to speak with both Ukrainian and Russian citizens on the issue. But it is impossible not to feel a sense of kinship with the citizens of Ukraine and particularly fellow journalists--from those fighting disinformation at The Kyiv Independent, to Luxembourg polyglot Philip Crowther reporting from the field. We feel a sense of loss hearing about the deaths of reporters just doing their job, most recently when US journalist and filmmaker Brent Renaud was killed in Irpin, or the death of 24-year-old Ukraine journalist Oleksandra Kuvshynova alongside experienced war photojournalist Pierre Zakrzewski.

When taking sides on a divisive debate--just as we did during the covid pandemic--we would rather listen to those putting their lives at risk on the front line than armchair critics.

This editorial was originally written on 16 March and published in the , published on 25 March. It has been updated for this online version.

Declaration of interest: Duncan Roberts is on the selection committee of Luxembourg City Film Festival, though that committee played no role in the decision to withdraw the Russian films.