The president's remarks have come amid an unprecedented purge of anything linked to Russia in Ukraine

Russian culture is facing tremendous pressure abroad amid unprecedented attacks on anything linked to Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said in a meeting with the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill. The president thanked the patriarch for his role in preserving the Russian culture and Russian language under such circumstances.

Safeguarding Russian culture "is particularly important nowadays when we are witnessing not just attacks on Russia but barbaric treatment of our culture even if it is a part of world culture," Putin said during the meeting on Saturday.

Such actions "do not reflect well" on those behind the attacks, the president stated, adding that Moscow has not seen such a level of animosity "for a long time." Putin did not name any specific examples of what he called "barbaric treatment" of Russian culture.

His remarks came amid an unprecedented campaign to purge anything linked to Russia in Ukraine. Kiev has been demolishing monuments and renaming streets deemed even remotely linked to Moscow or Ukraine's own Soviet past.

In December, the Odessa city council ordered the demolition of a 19th century monument to Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, which was designated a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site. Later the same month, an Odessa monument to the renowned Soviet poet, singer, and actor Vladimir Vysotsky was removed as well. The council described both monuments as symbols of "Russian imperial policy."

Since the escalation of the conflict in 2022, the campaign to remove historical links to Russia and its culture has intensified in Ukraine. Kiev passed a law on what it called the "decolonization" of street signs, monuments, memorials, and inscriptions. In December 2022, a statue of Catherine the Great was taken down in Odessa. The city was founded under her reign in 1794.

Kiev also accused the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) of maintaining ties to Russia despite the church declaring independence from the Moscow Patriarchate in May 2022. The Ukrainian authorities have launched a crackdown against the UOC that has included numerous arrests of clergymen and church raids.

Ukraine's Western backers have also used the conflict between Moscow and Kiev as a pretext for a crackdown on Russian artists, singers, and cultural figures. In a recent incident, a Russian photographer, Mikhail Tereshchenko, who won the World Press Photo Foundation contest in 2025, was banned from attending his award ceremony in Amsterdam.