Ukraine has urged organisers of the Venice Biennale to reconsider Russia’s participation in the prestigious art exhibition, arguing that it must not become “a stage for whitewashing… war crimes.”

Biennale organisers said last week that Russia would be allowed to take part in the event, held from 9 May until 22 November, triggering widespread criticism, including from Italy’s culture ministry, which said it opposed the decision.

Days after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the biennale, one of Italy’s most important cultural institutions, condemned the aggression and banned access to that year’s event for anyone linked to the Kremlin. Although it never formally barred the country from participating, Russia was absent in 2022 and 2024.

“The Venice Biennale is one of the world’s most authoritative art platforms, and it must not become a stage for whitewashing the war crimes that Russia commits daily against the Ukrainian people and our cultural heritage,” Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andriy Sybiha, and the culture minister, Tetyana Berezhna, said in a statement on Sunday.

“We call on the organisers of the Venice Biennale to reconsider their decision to allow the Russian Federation to return and to maintain the principled position demonstrated in 2022-2024.”

They said they found the biennale’s change of position “incomprehensible”, given its previous condemnation of the invasion.

Russia “has waged a systematic war against Ukrainian culture, identity, and historical memory”, the statement added, while killing 346 artists and 132 Ukrainian and foreign journalists, destroying or damaging more than 1,700 cultural heritage sites and stealing over 35,000 museum relics.

The biennale said in its statement last week that the exhibition was “an open institution” that “rejects any form of exclusion or censorship of art”.

On Friday, a group of cross-party MEPs published a letter condemning Russia’s inclusion as “unacceptable”.

“Such a choice risks lending legitimacy to a regime responsible for ongoing violence and will inevitably damage the reputation and moral standing of the biennale itself,” they wrote.

Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, a rightwing journalist and public intellectual, has been president of the Biennale Foundation since March 2024 after being appointed by Gennaro Sangiuliano, a former culture minister in Giorgia Meloni’s far-right government which came to power in October 2022.

At the time, Buttafuoco’s appointment was celebrated by Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party but criticised by leftwing opponents who said it was a further sign of her government’s infiltration of key cultural posts.

Buttafuoco told La Repubblica on Friday that he had invited people “from all areas of conflict to share their points of view”. “We believe that where there is art, there is dialogue,” he added.

The culture ministry, now headed by Alessandro Giuli, said the decision was made “entirely independently by the Biennale Foundation, despite the Italian government’s opposition”.

Despite friendly overtures towards Russia before coming to power, Meloni has been staunch in her support of Ukraine as prime minister.

Along with Russia, Ukraine and Belarus – a Russian ally that provided its territory for the invasion – artists from Iran, Israel and the US will attend the biennale.