Mikhail Baryshnikov on a New Group Effort to Support Ukrainian Relief: “Putin’s Actions Cannot Stand”

This Thursday marks a month since Russia launched its brutal war on Ukrainian democracy and its people, and the world has witnessed calamity unfold in multiple dimensions: photographs of bombed-out hospitals circulating on Twitter, refugees’ voices captured on podcasts, a TikTok-era president live from the streets. Across the border into Russia, the story cleaves into a binary. A dictator and a propaganda machine sit on one side, and on the other, protesters are shuttled into jails and independent journalism driven underground. Against this backdrop arrives True Russia, a fundraising effort for Ukrainian relief, with the goal of uniting the broader Russian-speaking community around the cause. “The horror unleashed on our kindred people in Ukraine is becoming a true humanitarian catastrophe,” write the three founders, dancer and artistic director Mikhail Baryshnikov, economist Sergei Guriev, and writer Boris Akunin. “The very word ‘Russian’ has become toxic,” they point out—all the more reason to leverage support for neighbors and wrest a shared culture from the hands of Vladimir Putin.

The project’s very name—with its whiff of oxymoron, considering the alternate reality of Russia’s state-run media—spells out a mission to reframe the narrative. “What’s important is that we’re trying to give voice to anyone, Russians included, who believe that brutal oppression is not a sign of strength,” Baryshnikov tells Vanity Fair by email. “I think there’s goodness in almost every human, and we’re looking to band together as much of that real humanity as possible.”

In short time, True Russia, which also counts writer Oleg Radzinsky as its leading director, has raised more than £844,000 (equivalent to just over $1.1 million) via GoFundMe for the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC)—the same umbrella organization to which Queen Elizabeth recently made a rare private donation. Its partners include such nonprofits as Save the Children, OXFAM, and Action Against Hunger, all of which are working to support the millions of refugees streaming out of Ukraine. True Russia’s platform also aims to be a trilingual hub (French being the third) for like-minded artists and thinkers, with a dispatch from novelist Lyudmila Ulitskaya and a short song by Andrey Makarevich. In stark contrast to Putin’s snarling position that pro-Western Russians are “scum and traitors,” the feeling here is solemn and communal.

There has been pressure in recent weeks for the world’s Russians to take a visible stand against the war (another word forbidden in Putin’s realm). Earlier this month, conductor Valery Gergiev, a noted Kremlin ally, was stripped of his post with the Munich Philharmonic; last week, conductor Tugan Sokhiev’s planned appearances with the New York Philharmonic were canceled. Ballet, with its deep ties to Russia, also finds itself entwined with politics. By way of a quotidian example, a decade-old video recently circulated on Instagram, showing pristine young dancers doing their exercises at the Vaganova Academy, a St. Petersburg conservatory founded in 1738, known as a training ground for ballet luminaries (among them Rudolf Nureyev, Baryshnikov, and Diana Vishneva). The comments below the post veered from the usual balletomane praise to scolding concern for Ukraine.

“There is a Russia of dictatorship, and there is a Russia of culture, a Russia of Putin and a Russia of Pushkin,” says Baryshnikov. “Today, people of the arts, sports, and science have to make their own choices about which Russia they belong to. It is a difficult choice because it involves a lot of personal risk, and can potentially harm the lives and livelihoods of family and loved ones.” He acknowledges that, in such times, even the absence of nationalistic fervor can draw the scrutiny of a repressive regime. “What Putin is doing in Russia’s name is disgusting and horrifying, and I know there are millions of Russians who don’t stand behind it. There are millions more who—if they knew what was happening—would resist. Maybe truerussia.org can be a small part of that.”

As an emissary of Soviet talent, there was no one like Baryshnikov in 1974, the year the 26-year-old Kirov Ballet star completed a Canadian tour with the Bolshoi and slipped quietly into a waiting Toronto taxi. In an instant, he became a man of the world. “What I have done is called a crime in Russia…But my life is my art and I realized it would be a greater crime to destroy that,” the newly defected Baryshnikov told The Globe and Mail at the time. As an artist, he sought to float above politics, and a devoted congregation gathered round. “He is dance: lyrical, romantic, pure, noble” is how Vogue greeted his arrival that fall, alongside a heroic Avedon portrait—arms outstretched, eyes tilted skyward. His celebrated career took him to both New York City Ballet (home to Russian émigré George Balanchine’s exacting style) and American Ballet Theatre, where he served as artistic director. White Oak Dance Project, cofounded in 1990 with Mark Morris, opened up audiences to experimental choreography through leading-edge commissions. Dance-film nerds know Baryshnikov from The Turning Point (1977) and White Nights (1985), while a role as Carrie’s lover in the original Sex and the City series endeared him to new fans. He remains a quiet creative force in Manhattan still, overseeing Baryshnikov Arts Center, a hub for performances and artist residencies.