I do take the cancelling, the boycotting, and the ostracism of Russian artists personally even though I have no Russian heritage.

One of my favourite movies of all time is Come and See. That's a Soviet war movie set in Belarus during WWII.

I personally consider it to be the greatest war movie ever made. Yes, I'm including Saving Private Ryan and Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket in that analysis.

It was a movie financed by an evil, despotic regime. It was set and shot in Belarus, which was a part of the Soviet Union at the time and, even now as an independent country, is complacent to the Russians in the conflict with Ukraine.

If you want me to break my blu-ray of Come and See over this conflict, I'll tell you to go fornicate yourself on an iron pike.

It would be dumb for you to tell me that I shouldn't watch Chinatown or Rosemary's Baby because Roman Polanski is a rapist. I can separate the art from the person. It's aggressively dumb to say that I should shun anything produced by somebody who happened to be born into an evil regime.

I can appreciate the craft of Leni Riefenstahl just as well as I can appreciate the craft of Elem Klimov without connecting with the powers that were operating when they were making their art.

If you can't do the same, I feel sorry for you.