Ukraine war JK Rowling claps back after Putin compared himself to Harry Potter author

JK Rowling has rubbished Putin’s childish rants that Russia is being ‘cancelled’ by the West as the Harry Potter author took the warmonger to task for ‘slaughtering civilians for the crime of resistance’.

The increasingly despotic ruler moaned about Russia’s increasing global isolation after he launched his illegal war on Ukraine during a speech to culture ministers.

Claiming that Hollywood has written the Red Army’s World War Two achievements out of history, Putin then accused the West of anti-Russian ‘discrimination’ – before likening himself to the British author and her recent troubles over gender rights.

Rowling has been accused of ‘transphobia’ after saying that only women experience menstruation, in remarks which created a firestorm and got her ‘cancelled’.

Putin spat out: ‘They [the West] cancelled JK Rowling, the children’s author – her books are published all over the world – all because she didn’t satisfy the demands of gender rights. They are trying to cancel out country – I’m talking the progressive discrimination of everything to do with Russia’.

But responding to the deranged Russian despot on Twitter, Rowling shared a BBC article about jailed Putin critic Alexei Navalny and wrote: ‘Critiques of Western cancel culture are possibly not best made by those currently slaughtering civilians for the crime of resistance, or who jail and poison their critics’. She added the hashtag: ‘#IStandWithUkraine’.

Putin even tried to link modern-day cancel culture to Nazi book burnings of the 1930s, claiming such things would never happen in Russia even as his regime imposes a ‘free speech lockdown’ which can see dissidents who call the invasion a ‘war’ jailed for 15 years. The Russian despot has also spoken of ‘cleansing’ everyone from Russian society who is too Western or harbours western thoughts.

Britain, the US and the European Union have hammered Russia with sanctions in the wake of Putin’s attack on Ukraine – cutting it off from banking systems and trade – which have crashed the rouble, while Western brands withdraw, leaving its economy in tatters.

But Putin took take particular ire with the decision of some Western institutions to remove works by Russian artists, authors and composers in response to the war.

Comparing Hollywood’s alleged downplaying of the Red Army’s achievements during World War Two to the Nazi book burnings of the 1930s, Putin then accused the West of ‘discriminating’ against ‘everything to do with Russia’ – before likening himself to the plight of the British author.

He accused institutions of trying to cancel the likes of Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Dmitry Shostakovich and Sergei Rachmaninov, along with Dostoyevsky.

‘Today they are trying to cancel a whole thousand-year culture, our people,’ Putin said in a televised meeting with cultural figures. ‘In this way they are banning Russian writers and books’.

Earlier this month, the Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra had removed Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture – which includes a volley of cannon-fire – from its upcoming performances in reaction to the war in Ukraine.

A university in Milan, Italy, had also announced it was pulling a course on Dostoevsky amidst the conflict, before backtracking after being mocked.

‘Russian writers and books are cancelled. The latest programme to cancel world literature was conducted 90 years ago by the Nazis, we remember that footage when they were burning books,’ Putin said.

‘It is impossible to imagine such a thing in our country and we’re insured against this thanks to our culture, and it is inseparable from us, from our motherland, from Russia where there is no place for intolerance.'

Putin has long sought to paint Russia as a pariah state that is being victimised by a capricious West, but has massively ramped up the rhetoric since the outbreak of war.

Since the invasion, the Russian leader and his inner circle have spoken of a ‘new Iron Curtain’ being deployed while likening sanctions to ‘a declaration of war’.

Sergey Naryshkin, head of the foreign intelligence service, spoke early in the invasion of ‘attempts to destroy our state – it’s “cancellation”, as it is now customary to say in a “tolerant” liberal-fascist environment’.

Russia’s war in Ukraine – intended to be a days-long military mission to decapitate the government and bring the country back under Moscow’s influence – is now grinding into its second month with huge losses for both sides.

About 300 people were killed in the Russian airstrike last week that blasted open a Mariupol theater, Ukrainian authorities said Friday in what would make it the war's deadliest known attack on civilians yet.

In a vain attempt to protect the hundreds of people taking cover inside the theater, 'CHILDREN' in Russian had been printed in huge white letters on the ground in two places outside the grand, columned building to make it visible from the air.

For days, the government in the besieged and ruined city of Mariupol was unable to give a casualty count for the March 16 attack.

In announcing the death toll on its Telegram channel

Friday, it cited eyewitnesses. But it was not immediately clear whether emergency workers had finished excavating the ruins of the Mariupol Drama Theater or how witnesses arrived at the figure.

Still, the emerging picture is certain to fuel allegations Moscow has committed war crimes by killing civilians, whether deliberately or by indiscriminate fire. And it could increase pressure on NATO to step up military aid.

The alliance has refused so far to supply warplanes or establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine for fear of getting into a war with Russia.

U.S. President Joe Biden's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said Friday the reaction to the theater bombing was 'just absolute shock, particularly given the fact that it was so clearly a civilian target.'

He said it showed 'a brazen disregard for the lives of innocent people.'

The scale of devastation in Mariupol, where bodies have been left unburied amid bomb craters and hollowed-out buildings, has made information difficult to obtain.

But soon after the attack, the Ukrainian Parliament's human rights commissioner said more than 1,300 people had taken shelter in the theater, many of them because their homes had been destroyed.

The building had a basement bomb shelter, and some survivors did emerge from the rubble after the attack.

The reported death toll came a day after Biden and allied leaders promised that more military aid for Ukraine is on the way.