West's ruling elites encourage discrimination of all things Russian - Putin

MOSCOW. March 25 (Interfax) - Russia has fallen victim to the cancel culture that is widespread in the West, President Vladimir Putin said.

"Suffice it to mention the phenomenon of cancel culture. In other words, public ostracizing, boycotting, or even total suppression and oblivion of obvious facts, books, names of historical and contemporary public and literary figures and simply people who do not fit into modern templates, however absurd they might be in reality," Putin said on Friday at a meeting with the recipients of the presidential award in arts and literature for children and young people, and young artistes.

"There are now attempts to cancel an entire 1,000-year-old country, our people. I am talking about the progressive discrimination of everything that is associated with Russia. With total connivance, and at times encouragement, by the ruling elites," Putin said.

"Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich and Rachmaninoff are being scraped off concert posters; Russian authors and their books are being banned," he said.

"The last time such a massive campaign of destruction of unwanted literature was carried out was almost 90 years ago by the Nazis in Germany," Putin said.

"It is impossible to imagine such a thing happening in our country, and we are insured against this largely thanks to our national culture," he said.