‘Severely restricted’: Russia’s Saint Petersburg faces cultural crackdown

Russian bookseller Lyubov Belyatskaya sighed as she lamented the “climate of widespread anxiety” that has taken hold in her native Saint Petersburg amid the war in Ukraine.

Once dubbed Russia’s “window to Europe”, the city has long been the country’s cultural capital, a hotbed of independent thinking, artistic expression and underground dissent.

But as authorities ratchet up repression, trying to stamp out any sign, no matter how small or subtle, of public opposition to the Kremlin or the Ukraine offensive, Belyatskaya said she senses the city retreating inwards.

“We can no longer write the way we used to, joke about certain things,” she told AFP.

“Both our words and actions are severely restricted.”

The effect is being seen on the shelves of her bookshop — called “Vse Svobodny” or “E