Putin’s regime will not survive the war, says Ilya Khrzhanovsky, the artistic director of the Babyn Yar memorial in Kyiv. A conversation about the steadfastness of the Ukrainians, the brainwashing in his home country Russia and the time after the war.
Ilya Khrzhanovsky, 46, is one of the most internationally renowned Russian avant-garde artists. His controversial large-scale “Dau” project was an attempt at a conceptual re-enactment of Stalin’s terror, including scenes of torture. It was created over several years in the northern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. Films from it were shown at the Cannes and Berlin festivals. The history of violence in the totalitarian ideologies of the 20th century is Khrzhanovsky’s central theme.