The annual “March of the Kremlin Cadets” proceeds near Moscow on October 6, 2021, a few months before Russia invaded Ukraine. (Shutterstock/Artyom Sobolev)

From Russia with Distrust

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A recent documentary examines the Russian military’s experiences in the war in Ukraine. Does that make it propaganda?

The Ukraine War poses several ethical challenges for reporters and analysts. Among them: should reporters provide objective information about what is happening on the ground, even if their findings lend support, directly or indirectly, for the Russian war effort? 

This dilemma has surfaced in the reception of the documentary Russians at War, which shows daily life in a Russian army unit in Luhansk in occupied Ukraine in 2024. Anastasia Trofimova, a Russian-Canadian filmmaker, spent seven months embedded with troops close to the front line, without official Russian state accreditation. Operating the camera herself, she recorded interviews and scenes of daily life in a rear-echelon unit shuttling supplies to the front and picking up the dead and the wounded.

Trofimova was invited to shadow the unit by a 49-year-old soldier from occupied Ukraine, Ilia, whom she met in the Moscow subway. Ilia’s battalion commander agreed to turn a blind eye, so long as she stayed away from the front line. Trofimova’s ability to pull this off contrasts with the fate of at least 25 journalists jailed in occupied Ukraine, including the Ukrainian Viktoriia Roshchyna, who was murdered in a Russian prison.

Russians at War is a remarkable piece of journalism, offering a firsthand look at the lives of ordinary Russian soldiers. Independent journalists are not allowed anywhere near the front lines, and Russian reporting on the experiences of their soldiers cannot be trusted. The Russian army has suffered devastating losses—an estimated 275,000 to 325,000 dead, and a million more injured. Western observers are keen to know how their morale is holding up: whether Russian troops are willing to continue the frontal assaults which have been grinding forward across the unoccupied section of Donetsk province. They try to glean insights from social media and reports from independent Russian military bloggers, but these are unreliable sources.

The film was screened at international film festivals in September........

© The National Interest