During a visit to Paris, the filmmaker, who lives between Germany and France and whose latest film, Limonov: The Ballad, dedicated to the Russian writer and activist who died in 2020, opened in cinemas on December 4, talked about the genesis of his feature film, which was hit by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but above all about the fate of his former student, director Evgenia Berkovich, who is being held in prison like other Kremlin opponents and anti-war activists.

No one knows. On the one hand, it could be said that the Kremlin's "special military operation" in Ukraine is, in a way, the realization of Limonov's ideas as a nationalist imperialist: He spoke of war against the West and hammered home the fact that the West wanted to destroy Russia – all elements of Russian President Vladimir Putin's current discourse. On the other hand, Limonov is usually seen as a perpetual dissident: In essence, he opposed the powerful of this world and, by implication, he would be against the authoritarian regime in the Kremlin.

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