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Kremlin Official Urges to Ban Western Cinema Until Hollywood Makes “Positive Films” About Russia
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The Western film industry operates in close cooperation with US intelligence agencies, a senior Russian official claimed at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), The Moscow Times reported on June 4.
He also claimed that the industry cooperates with the Department of Defense and the US State Department to deliberately fuel anti-Russian sentiment.
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Alexey Shevtsov, Deputy Secretary of Russia’s Security Council, argued during a panel on cinema that the West actively uses a distorted portrayal of Russian and CIS history. According to Shevtsov, these cinematic depictions are designed to provoke ethnic strife, form a rejection of the country, and create hostility toward the Russian language.
These remarks come amid an escalating state campaign toward tighter domestic censorship and stricter state control over movies, videos, and music inside Russia.
In March, a draft bill was introduced to the State Duma that would ban screening licenses for foreign films that promote “offensive, stereotypical images” of citizens or contain “distorted and legacy-discrediting” depictions of Russia, the USSR, and the Russian military, The Moscow Times wrote.
Russian Member of Parliament Evgeny Marchenko cited the movie Rambo—for its depiction of Soviet soldiers—and the television series The Sopranos—for propagating myths about the Russian mafia—as prime examples of content that should be outlawed, The Moscow Times noted.
Marchenko asserted that banning such content would ultimately force Hollywood and Western production companies to shoot high-quality, positive films about Russia.
However, the Kremlin’s efforts to substitute Hollywood productions with alternative imports have largely failed to capture the domestic market. The Moscow Times reports that prior data from major Russian streaming platforms indicated that local audiences showed little interest in Turkish and Korean television series introduced to fill the void left by departed Hollywood studios, with Asian content drawing less than half of the viewership on platforms like Premier.
This cultural crackdown aligns with an escalation in Russia’s digital isolation. A recent report had revealed that the state media regulator, Roskomnadzor, has begun mass-removing major Western platforms—including YouTube, WhatsApp, and Instagram—from the National Domain Name System (NSDI) under its “sovereign Runet” law.
To seal this information blockade, the State Duma is reviewing legislation to grant the Federal Security Service (FSB) absolute authority to shut down all national communications, including fixed broadband and telephone services, while entirely shielding telecom providers from financial liability to their customers.
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