The widow of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is leading calls for Italy to scrap a performance by a Russian orchestra conductor with close ties to Vladimir Putin at a music festival in southern Italy.
Valery Gergiev, who has been a close ally of Putin since the early 1990s, will perform in Europe for the first time since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine after being invited to Un’Estate da Re festival in La Reggia di Caserta, a former Bourbon palace and Unesco world heritage site in Campania, on 27 July.
Italy broke a Europe-wide ban on pro-Kremlin artists after the invitation was endorsed by Vincenzo De Luca, the leftwing president of the Campania region. De Luca said culture “must not be influenced by politics and political logic”.
Writing in La Repubblica on Tuesday, Yulia Navalnaya, whose husband died in an Arctic prison last year, said Gergiev’s performance at the festival – billed as a highlight of the summer season in southern Italy – would be “a gift to the dictator”.
Gergiev, widely seen as one of Russia’s most powerful cultural figures, was fired from several European concerts, festivals and theatres, including Milan’s prestigious La Scala, for refusing to condemn Putin over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The last time Gergiev performed in Italy was at La Scala on 23 February 2022, hours after the invasion began.
Navalnaya wrote that Gergiev was not only a “dear friend” and supporter of Putin but also a “promoter” of the Russian president’s “criminal policies”.
“The terrible and devastating war in Ukraine continues, people are dying every day, and Ukrainian cities are burning,” she said. “How is it possible that in the summer of 2025, three years after the start of the conflict in Ukraine, Valery Gergiev, Putin’s accomplice and a person included on the sanctions lists of several countries, was suddenly invited to Italy to participate in a festival?”
Gergiev, 72, has repeatedly voiced support for Putin, appearing in a 2012 campaign ad, endorsing the annexation of Crimea in 2014, and conducting a patriotic concert in Syria’s ancient city of Palmyra in 2016, after Russian forces helped the former Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad recapture it.
Ruslan Shaveddinov, a longtime aide to the Navalny family, told the Guardian that Gergiev’s performance in Europe “would serve to normalise Putin’s regime in the eyes of the civilised world”.
“We’ve used every tool at our disposal to try to stop him from taking part in the event in Italy, because giving a platform to one of the Kremlin’s propagandists at such a prestigious European festival would be a huge gift to Moscow,” Shaveddinov said.
“That’s why we are campaigning to cancel Valery Gergiev’s concert in Europe – and pushing for sanctions against him and other high-profile figures who, despite their talent and international recognition, have chosen to act as propagandists at a time when Vladimir Putin and his war align them with war criminals.”
Gergiev’s US agent has been approached for comment.
