The AST publishing house announced the suspension of royalties to Lyudmila Ulitskaya after the writer said that she transfers royalties from book sales to Ukraine. TASS writes about this with reference to the AST press service.
“In connection with the author’s statement about the transfer of royalties to Ukraine, the AST publishing house decided to suspend any payments under all contracts with Ulitskaya until the situation is clarified and possible official explanations from the author regarding the recipients of monetary contributions from books sold,” the AST news agency quotes the words.
A day earlier, pro-Kremlin pranksters Vovan and Lexus published a conversation with Ulitskaya on behalf of Andrei Ermak, head of the office of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. In the video, the writer said that she transfers the money received through her creativity to Ukraine because she opposes the Russian invasion of the country. In addition, Ulitskaya said that she considers it “Ukraine’s right” to carry out aggressive actions against pro-Kremlin propagandists.
Soon after this, it became known that the writer was stripped of the title of honorary professor at the Russian Chemical-Technological University (RHTU) named after Mendeleev. State Duma deputies also began to criticize Ulitskaya — for example, the head of the lower house of parliament committee on culture, Elena Yampolskaya, wrote that “Ulitskaya’s behavior over the past time can’t be straightened out,” and her deputy Alexander Sholokhov proposed depriving the writer of awards and titles.
This morning, Ulitskaya’s books stopped being available for booking in the electronic system of Moscow libraries, and the writer’s works were also stopped being issued to readers. As employees of the capital's libraries told the Agency, Ulitskaya's books are sent for write-off and recycling.