Illustration: Chen Xia/GT

For some Westerners, anything could be weaponized, including cats. Yes, CATS. 

Amid the spiraling crisis in Ukraine, a ludicrous news story hit the headlines: Russian cats are sanctioned. 

The Fédération Internationale Féline, an NGO of cat registries founded in Belgium, announced on Tuesday a ban on Russian-bred cats from its shows, and cat owners who live in Russia are also banned from the organization.

This is the tip of the iceberg among a growing number of drama queens in Western countries who have jumped into a so-called anti-war campaign, with their moves going far beyond people's understanding, even imagination. Cats are only one target on the very long list. 

FIFA and its European counterpart UEFA decided that all Russian teams shall be suspended from participating in both FIFA and UEFA competitions until further notice. Performances of Russian ballets have been canceled across the UK. University of Milan-Bicocca in Italy decided to remove courses on Fyodor Dostoevsky, a notable Russian author, from its program. Valery Gergiev, a star Russian maestro, was fired as chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic. 

Turns out sports, arts, and science aren't apolitical; they all have crystal clear borders in the eyes of some Western forces. Dostoevsky died over 140 years ago, but his legacy couldn't survive the wave of the West's anti-Russia sentiment. If the trend goes on, Tetris, a puzzle video game created by a Soviet software engineer, should shiver for possibly being aimed at next. And young Western generations may have to bid adieu to the periodic table, the tabular display of the chemical elements invented by Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev. 

Gergiev was fired because he refused to denounce Russia's latest actions against Ukraine, even if the mayor of Munich demanded that he should. Yet, how should we define the behavior of asking someone to publicly condemn his own motherland and government? Perhaps the only description that can be tossed out is - brutal and barbaric. Public institutions can make rules for its employees on what not to talk about, but they have no right to require anyone to say anything against their home country. Artists are supposed to unite people from political disputes. But now they are being torn apart. 

This is a crude invasion of politics into global exchanges in Western society. "It may even be a new type of 'color revolution,'" Lü Xiang, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times. Lü noted that to a large extent, the Russia-Ukraine conflict is a warfare of information. 

Western media outlets and politicians have no interest in informing its audience of the cautiousness the Russian troops have tried to show and maintain. On the contrary, they desperately exaggerate the situation of the war and tried hard to paint a scene where Russian troops are "invading" intensively, the Ukraine people are resisting heroically, and the anti-war waves are boiling all over the world. Yet this whole set of stories is simply choreographed by the West, according to Lü. 

In Joe Biden's first State of the Union speech, delivered on Wednesday, not a single word was uttered to encourage Russia and Ukraine to sit down at the negotiating table. Biden was busy blaming Russia, emphasizing Washington will step up sanctions against Moscow. Mainstream US and European media even use pictures and videos that have nothing to do with Ukraine to show the "war situation" in Ukraine. In this atmosphere filled with anti-Russia hysteria, people and organizations naturally follow suit, Lü said. 

The more absurd their sanctions are, the more it proves how easily the West could lose its temper, as it becomes toothless. They can vent their anger against Russian cats effortlessly, but do they have the nerve to cut all oil and gas trade with Russia? 

Why cats, arts and sports? What can they possibly do wrong: Attack a country or beat the drum of war? They are innocent. The problem lies in those incompetent Western politicians and elites. They do not dare to resolve the issue militarily, or be willing to fix the conundrum through talks. As a result, irrelevant elements are picked up, politicized and even weaponized. Worse, instead of anti-war, the moves are making the situation worse.