Nikita Mikhalkov suggested that the artists who left should not be allowed back to Russia.

Director Nikita Mikhalkov expressed the opinion on March 25 that the departed cultural figures who speak ill of Russia should not be stripped of state awards, but they should not be allowed into the country either.

"Waiting for everything to settle down here and coming back, and then this award will work for you here is bad," the director said in an interview with Izvestia correspondent Viktor Sineok.

He noted that state awards have no meaning for those figures who have left Russia and speak ill of their country.

Earlier, on February 22, Mikhail Shvydkoi, the special representative of the President of the Russian Federation for international cultural cooperation, said that there would be no collective amnesty for artists who had left Russia.