Plenary session of United Cultures Forum

The events of the 10^th St Petersburg International United Cultures Forum will last until September 14. The anniversary year's theme is the 21^st Century Culture: Sovereignty or Globalism?

The plenary session was held in the General Staff building of the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg.

* * *

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Ladies and gentlemen, friends,

I am glad to welcome you in Russia, in St Petersburg.

It is the tenth time now that our northern capital city welcomes cultural representatives from around the world. Every meeting of this kind, like the culture itself, embodies the Zeitgeist and raises acute, vital and most important issues.

The Forum of United Cultures is a substantive answer to the most complicated challenges that our countries and nations are facing today. Even its name recognises the civilisational diversity of the world, people's natural right to identity, respect for traditional values and religions and, of course, the countries' unconditional equality in shaping the global cultural agenda.

These approaches and principles were envisaged in the Declaration adopted at the last year's forum. Their relevance in our time is higher than ever.

The importance of humanism and dialogue, mutual respect and trust in the world is shared by the global majority. However, it is unfortunately under constant pressure and the threat of dilution, primarily due to unprecedented politicisation of the cultural sphere, which is being turned into a weapon in geopolitical schemes, and due to constant attempts to push it to the sidelines and to belittle the importance of national value systems and everything that does not coincide with the agenda promoted by the globalist elites and the ruling circles in some countries.

Russia has identified its main values and enshrined them in the Constitution, the country's Basic law. We protect these values and everyone who shares them, who, like us, believes that the people's right to speak their mother tongue and keep the faith of their fathers, to live in harmony with nature under its natural laws is sacred.

Without exaggeration, the result of these efforts will determine both the future world order and prospects for culture. We believe that it should and can exist without gross interference and without cancel culture, that is, the cancellation of culture itself.

To be continued.

Public link

Please use the above public link if you want to share this noodl on another website.