Ukraine’s foreign ministry criticised HBO this past week after Milos Bikovic was cast in the third season of “The White Lotus,” saying without evidence that the Serbian actor had supported Russia since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. HBO announced on Jan. 12 that Bikovic, 36, would be joining the dark comedy about wealthy tourists at island resorts.On Wednesday, the foreign ministry of Ukraine made the accusations against Bikovic on social media, writing, “HBO, is it all right for you to work with a person who supports genocide & violates international law?” Bikovic was awarded the Pushkin Medal, which honours contributions to Russian arts and culture, by President Vladimir Putin in 2018 and received Russian citizenship by presidential decree in 2021. In February 2022, the day after the invasion began, Bikovic said on Instagram that he wished the war had not happened. Ukraine’s foreign ministry and Bikovic did not respond to requests for comment. A 79-second video that Ukraine’s foreign ministry posted on social media interspersed scenes from “The White Lotus” with clips of Bikovic accepting the award from Putin and previous comments it said the actor had made about Russia. In a voice-over, it claimed that Bikovic was “the Kremlin’s foreign mouthpiece”. During Bikovic’s acceptance speech for the Pushkin Medal, he emphasized unity between Russia and Serbia. Ukraine barred Bikovic from entering the country in 2019 for what it called national security reasons. At the time, he told a Serbian publication that “from the human and poetic point of view the situation is absurd and interesting.”