Pro-War Russian Writers Say Moscow Isn’t Doing Enough to Fight the War in Ukraine or Support Their Own Efforts to Generate Support for It

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 1 – A group of Russian writers who have criticized the Kremlin for not doing enough to win in Ukraine is now complaining that the Kremlin isn’t supporting them in ways that allow them to get their message to Russians in general and school children in particular, the Ostorozhno Novosti agency says.

            At a roundtable of such writers in St. Petersburg, Aleksandr Pelevin said that Moscow has failed to launch “a special cultural operation since the war began” as a result of which “patriotic poetry was “in decline as it is hard to keep writing about the capture of yet another small village” (t.me/ostorozhno_novosti/55435 and ru.themoscowtimes.com/2026/10/01/zagnali-v-zagon-z-pisateli-pozhalovalis-chto-ih-ne-podderzhivaet-gosudarstvo-i-ne-chitayut-rossiyane-a207490).

            Another pro-war poet, Aksel Kobokki said Moscow’s failure to launch a cultural effort alongside its military one was threatening patriotic feelings among many Russians who have “little trust in the people aligned with the authorities as a result” and that patriots were finding it harder to defend their allies than ever before.

            And a third speaker at the meeting said that he was aware of “orders to keep patriotic writers out of schools” and that these orders “came from the highest levels of the government.” Still others complained that writers at the front weren’t being given leave to attend literary events.