A top official at the Hermitage museum in St. Petersburg has left Russia in protest at the Kremlin's ongoing unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
Dmitry Ozerkov, the director of the modern arts section of the world's largest art museum by gallery space, wrote on Instagram on October 2 that he had quit his job after Hermitage Director Mikhail Piotrovsky praised the war in an interview in June while calling arts exhibitions organized by the Hermitage abroad another "special operation" to push forward "Russian world's ideas."
"I left because I don’t intend to have anything in common with today’s Russia," Ozerkov wrote, adding that "Russia squeezed out all of us who wanted nothing but good to its culture."
President Vladimir Putin has refused to call the conflict a war, and has signed legislation making it illegal to use the word to describe what he calls a "special military operation."
Since Russia launched its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine on February 24, many celebrities, writers, actors, opposition politicians, and activists have left Russia.
Last month Putin announced a "partial military mobilization" to support the war in Ukraine, prompting tens of thousands of Russian men to flee the country for nations where they can enter without visas. Most headed to Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia.
The board of directors at the Hermitage museum, which was founded in 1764, has several members who have been included in sanctions by the West against Putin and those around him for the invasion of Ukraine.