How Yura Borisov of ‘Anora’ Went From the Kremlin to the Oscars

On the face of it, the Russian actor Yura Borisov was an unlikely actor to land an Oscar nomination in 2025.

Just a few years ago he played a guileless soldier in a Kremlin-sponsored movie that celebrated a Soviet tank model. Later, he starred in a biopic of Mikhail Kalashnikov, the man who invented the Russian automatic rifle.

But after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, he stopped playing in militaristic movies. Last year, Western audiences fell in love with him as a tight-lipped but sentimental mafia errand boy in “Anora,” a Brooklyn-based indie dramedy about a stripper who impulsively marries the son of a Russian oligarch.

At the Academy Awards on Sunday, Borisov is up for best supporting actor for the role.

The war in Ukraine cut many Russian artists off from the West, but Borisov has been among the few who managed to transcend the dividing lines. He has continued a career in Russia, without endorsing or condemning the war, while in the West, he has evaded being seen as a representative of state-sponsored Russian culture.

“Borisov hasn’t picked a side,” said Anton Dolin, a leading Russian film critic. “Maybe he is just very smart, or maybe he thinks he is not smart enough,” Dolin said by phone from Riga, Latvia, where he now lives in exile.

“It doesn’t matter,” Dolin added. “His behavior and strategy have been impeccable.”