Four years into the full-scale war in Ukraine, Russia’s elite has shown no sign of resisting the very difficult spot that Vladimir Putin placed them in by acting without their consultation. Instead, it has largely adapted, reshaping itself in ways that ensure its survival in what increasingly looks like a state of permanent conflict.

In the atmosphere of repression, Russian top-level officials and public intellectuals, who are tasked with ruling the country and shaping what society thinks and discusses, remain reluctant to express directly what they really think. The narratives they offer through culture are therefore some of the clearest expressions of how they see their role in a wartime country.

This year, Moscow has hosted two major government-backed awards ceremonies – one for books, one for films. In both cases, the organisers played it safe, repeating familiar themes, many of them rooted in Soviet-era cultural and wartime mythology. Prizes went largely to people within the same orbit – in most cases, the families of well-known Soviet-era cultural icons.

At the book festival, the grand prize went to Nikita Mikhalkov, a celebrated Soviet and Russian film director who is known for many things but not for writing books. The Mikhalkovs would win by a wide margin any competition for the family that has stayed closest to the Kremlin for the longest. Nikita’s father, Sergei, wrote the Soviet national anthem under Joseph Stalin, rewrote it during the thaw and revised it again under Putin. Nikita, now 80, is a clearcut imperialist and a close ally of Putin.

The main film prize went to an interpretation of a second world war story, co-directed by the son of another famous Soviet actor. This high-octane patriotic thriller is about brave and intelligent Stalin-era military counterintelligence officers playing a cat-and-mouse game with Nazi saboteurs behind Red Army lines, as the army prepares for a major offensive. It is based on a book written in the 1970s and has already had two film adaptations, the most recent released in 2000.

The film festival was launched and overseen by Nikita Mikhalkov. The Russian culture minister, Olga Lyubimova, herself a protege of Mikhalkov, attended the awards ceremony, seated next to her patron. Lyubimova is a proud descendant of another legendary Soviet actor, and her family has been close to the Mikhalkovs for decades. None of the films or books shown at the festivals contained any sign of dissent, or even subtle allegorical critiques of the state of things in Russia. They were as straightforward and loyal as they could be.

As a prominent and well-connected member of Russia’s elite, Lyubimova is perhaps the clearest example of how that elite has adapted to wartime reality. She started her career in the early 2000s as an aspiring television journalist, but from the early days relied on her connections with Mikhalkov and the Russian Orthodox Church. And yet she happily mixed with Moscow liberals – in the 2000s it still appeared possible to make your career without thinking too much about the Kremlin. We ourselves were once part of this group.

Some of her friends and acquaintances were descendants of prominent Soviet families and felt nostalgic for the status they had lost with the collapse of the Soviet Union. As journalists, many reported from post-Soviet hotspots in the 1990s – South Ossetia, Abkhazia, but also Serbia – and became convinced of the existence of a large US conspiracy against the Russian empire and its traditional allies.

And most of them, being ambitious, wanted a role in Russian history. They became convinced that in a country such as Russia, this could only be achieved by serving the ruler: you are either “in” or “out” – and if you are out, you are a loser. They had embraced this logic before 2022. Now, in a time of repression targeting many Russian state institutions – including the culture ministry – this logic feels sounder still.

But it was Lyubimova who probably offered the most succinct explanation of why people like her – neither narrow-minded nor brainwashed – chose to side with the Kremlin. When Moscow was deeply shaken by mass protests in 2010-2011 against Putin’s return to the Kremlin, Lyubimova’s liberal friends joined the demonstrations. She responded by publishingonline what she called Lyubimova’s manifesto for surviving in this brutal Russia: “I lie on my back, spread my legs, breathe deeply, and even try to enjoy it.”

This blunt formulation is extreme, but it captures a broader mindset within the Russian elite today: a mix of ambition and adaptation to an increasingly vengeful political regime. Many choose accommodation simply because they see no other way to remain part of the system and of history. Lyubimova’s career seems to confirm this approach: five years after publishing her manifesto, she was made an adviser in the ministry of culture, and five years later Putin appointed her minister. Since 2022, her ministry has been actively involved in promotion of the war in Ukraine and Russification of the occupied territories.

But deep down, Lyubimova and her like still want to be accepted in the west. The European travel ban proved to be one of the most painful punishments for Russian officials, many of whom at the start of the war believed it would not last long and that they would soon return to Paris and Vienna. After four years, that illusion has disappeared, but the desire has not.

When Pope Francis died in April 2025, Putin’s decision to send Lyubimova to Rome to attend the funeral was seen as a generous gift and aroused envy among many officials. Like them, she had been under an EU travel ban since December 2022, and it was lifted only for this occasion. A video from St Peter’s Basilica, showing the minister reverentially touching the pope’s coffin, was proudly posted on her social media.

A month later, it was announced that Lyubimova would travel to Rome again, this time for the inaugural mass of Pope Leo XIV. However, this time she didn’t make it. According to the Kremlin, the trip collapsed because of “technical inconsistencies in her flight route”. In reality, her plane was not allowed into European airspace.

This year, instead of Europe, she made official visits to Brazil and Qatar – in line with Russia’s geopolitical pivot. On social media, she underlined that inter-museum cooperation with Qatar was one of the most promising areas of partnership. Apparently, it would be a wartime substitute for Moscow’s cooperation with the Louvre and other western museums that endured during the cold war, but have now stopped.

The boundaries of acceptable behaviour are narrowing, and the elite she personifies is adjusting accordingly. In the face of what looks like a permanent war, they have chosen adaptation, internalisation and, ultimately, isolation.