How do you say “entertainment” in Russian? Whatever it is, call this a case of the rapidly vanishing Russian options for moviegoers, as Russia will be banning the smash hit “Barbie” from all of its movie screens and, for good measure, “Oppenheimer” is barred too.

Both films are in shocking violation, apparently, of traditional Russian spiritual and moral values — whatever is left of those nearly 20 months into bombing cities and towns across Ukraine. The Hollywood blockbusters are so egregiously un-Russian that they won’t even be allowed for home viewing.

The state duma deputy speaker, Vladislav Davankov, made a special request to the Russian prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin, to try to get the American blockbusters shown in a way that would navigate around the requisite copyright permissions to do so. “Barbie” is owned by Warner Brothers and “Oppenheimer” by Universal Pictures. Both companies departed Russia last year following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

On Thursday, though, the deputy culture minister, Andrey Malyshev, in effect said nyet: “We believe that the films that you have proposed for viewing for citizens of our country — ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ — do not align with the goals and objectives set by the head of state to maintain and strengthen the traditional Russian spiritual and moral values.”

Russia is not the only country to have banished the pink-loving “Barbie” — Lebanon and Algeria are among the handful of countries that already have — but now, so much for Barbenheimer with a Russian twist.

“Barbie” earned more than $1 billion worldwide within just three weeks of its release on July 20, and “Oppenheimer” grossed more than half a billion dollars in the same period. Neither film was released in Russia, though bootlegged versions of both found their way into the country. Thousands of illegal downloads, though of diminished visual quality, were reportedly made of the films, 

More than lack of movie choices is at stake. The rejection of the films for Russian audiences represents a slide backward culturally for the world’s largest country, where President Putin has served continuously as president since 2012. He was also between president 2000 an 2008.

The ban follows last year’s exit from Russia of McDonald’s and dozens of other Western businesses. The iconic hamburger chain first entered the Russian market in 1990 at Moscow’s Pushkin Square. Last June, a similar version called Vkusno-i Tochka, Russian for “Tasty and that’s it,” opened in its place as well as in other former McDonald’s locations across Russia. The “Sorry, We’re Closed” sign that Russia is hanging on its door, though, is just getting bigger. 

Mr. Putin is behind most of that, of course. In Russia, it is now a crime to refer to the invasion of Ukraine as a war; the approved terminology is “special military operation.” Last year the Kremlin  expanded a law from 2013 that banned the spread of so-called gay propaganda to minors by proscribing the propagation of such information to adults. The ban followed Mr. Putin’s expansion of a so-called foreign agents law that was widely seen as a move by the Kremlin to keep an even tighter lid on freedom of expression. 

As for matters cinematic, Mr. Malyshev stated that “representatives of the film industry note the positive aspect of the reduction in the number of films from Hollywood film studios at the box office.” In an odd twist on the maxim that less is more, the culture ministry is peddling the line that the dearth of foreign films in Russian movie theaters today actually stimulates the development of domestic cinematography. Does it?

Mr. Malyshev maintained that Russian films that are “fully consistent with spiritual and moral values” are now being successfully shown in the Russian box office. Examples he cited include a movie called “Witness,” about the “military operation” in Ukraine, as well as “high-quality domestic premieres” like “Cheburashka” and “A Dog Named Palma, Part 2,” the sequel to “A Dog Named Palma,” a 2021 film about the friendship of a boy and a German Shepherd dog he finds at Moscow’s Vnukovo  airport in the 1970s.