“Such footage should be used at the trial in The Hague, but it is 'off limits' for publication in the media.” How Ukrainian documentary filmmakers defend the truth about the war

The full-scale war that began on February 24, 2022, is another episode of Russian aggression that has been going on for centuries with impunity.
In response to the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the occupation of parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, Russia received sanctions from the EU. However, this was not enough to stop the Kremlin authorities from occupying the whole of Ukraine. The Ukrainian people thwarted the Kremlin's aggressive plans - a small military operation that was supposed to last three days escalated into the largest armed conflict in Europe since World War II, which has been going on for more than three years.

The retrospective of the first month of the great war and the refutation of the false narratives and fakes that accompanied the attack on Ukraine are possible thanks to the work of Ukrainian photo documentary filmmakers who have been recording the invasion of the invading army from the very beginning.

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“It was the beginning of a truly 'wild' war for the survival of my country”

To justify their unmotivated full-scale attack, the Russians intensified their shelling in eastern Ukraine, provoking the Ukrainian military to respond.
“According to the conclusion of the Ukrainian command, the enemy insidiously fired artillery from populated areas and placed its artillery systems near residential buildings - “by such actions, the enemy is trying to force units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to return fire in order to further accuse Ukrainian defenders of shelling civilians,” Novynarnya reports.

On February 21, 2022, at the request of the so-called “governors” of the pseudo-republics of the DPR and LPR, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed decrees recognizing their independence and “ensuring peace in them with the help of the Russian Armed Forces.” (“Gazeta.ru”)
On February 24, the Russian president announced the start of a “special military operation” in Donbas, citing Article 51 of the UN and agreements between the so-called DPR, LPR and Russia. Putin said that the decision to launch the so-called “special military operation” was made because of the escalation of the situation in Donbas by Ukrainian security forces. He said that because of the threat of Ukraine's invasion, civilians were being temporarily evacuated to Russia.

All this time, under the pretext of military exercises, the Russians were moving equipment and manpower to the borders of Ukraine. On February 24, 2022, the Russian army crossed the state border of Ukraine, advancing in the east, south, and north.

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Representatives of the Kremlin authorities made loud statements in support of the so-called “SVO” one after another. Director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service Naryshkin claimed that Russia was forced to defend itself: “A special military operation will quickly restore peace in Ukraine and help prevent a potential large-scale military conflict in Europe.” Russia's Permanent Representative to the UN, Nebenzya, said on the international stage that Russia had no plans to occupy Ukraine.

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“Nebenzya: We do not plan to occupy Ukraine. The purpose of the special operation is to protect people who have been subjected to abuse and genocide by the Kyiv regime for 8 years. To do this, it is necessary to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine.”
At a meeting in Turkey on March 10, 2022, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov described the preconditions for the war as “a situation that posed a direct threat to the security of the Russian Federation,” while denying that the Russian army had invaded Ukraine.

The propagandists gave reasons for the “SVO”.

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“Three main reasons for Operation Z:

1. Ukraine was developing nuclear weapons.
2. American biological weapons laboratories are located in Ukraine.
3. A massive attack on Donbas was being prepared.”

After crossing the border from Belarus and Russia, Russian troops moved toward Kyiv. On the first day of the invasion, the Russians planned to use the city of Gostomel as a bridgehead to enter the capital, where they would seize the strategically important Antonov airport and prepare to receive airplanes with troops and equipment. The Kremlin hoped to quickly seize the Ukrainian capital.

The propaganda news agency RIA Novosti had prepared a victorious story in advance, “The Offensive of Russia and the New World,” which was automatically published on February 26. The article talked about the new redistribution of the world and the “Ukrainian issue” and broadcast occupation plans, veiled by the phrase “returning Ukraine to the bosom of Russia.”
The Depo.ua portal says that the article was later removed, but it remained in the cache.
The article argues that the unresolved Ukrainian issue is a matter of Russia's national security, but most importantly, the loss of Ukraine is the loss of part of the foundation, the rejection of its history. Otherwise, the author of the article says, Russia “would have to agree with the crazy versions that ‘only Ukraine is the real Russia’. The hostile media argues that delaying the resolution of this issue means later fighting with the Atlantic bloc.

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“Now this problem does not exist - Ukraine has returned to Russia. This does not mean that its statehood will be eliminated, but it will be re-established, a part of the Russian world returned to its natural state. To what extent, in what form will the union with Russia be consolidated (through the CSTO and the Eurasian Union or the Union State of Russia and Belarus)? This will be decided after Ukraine's history as an anti-Russian state is put to rest. Beyond that, the period of division of the Russian people is coming to an end.”

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Photojournalist Andriy Dubchak recalls Kyiv in the first days of the full-scale invasion: “[...] I analyzed the news and rumors and was sure that the city had no chance of survival. That Kyiv would soon be surrounded and that there would be a 'Stalingrad' here. I wanted to show this to the world. But it was really scary, because it was no longer the Joint Forces Operation in the east. It was the beginning of a truly “wild” war for the survival of my country. And I knew that many of those I knew would die. And I might die too...”.

The offensive was accompanied by heavy shelling across the country. Martial law with curfews and checkpoints were introduced in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Russia was advancing not only with equipment and personnel. In addition to tanks and missiles, the enemy armed itself with fake news and disinformation to massively influence Ukrainians who were horrified to see the war at home.
The enemy's rhetoric of the offensive in the first weeks sounded triumphant: the Ukrainian people were not going to fight, people were fleeing the country, the Armed Forces were not resisting, all military forces were defeated, and only “Ukrainian propaganda was creating the appearance of resistance by spreading fakes.”
The Russian army was advancing as “liberators,” expecting a friendly welcome. The Russians were going to “liberate” the Ukrainian people from the “Nazi junta” that had allegedly captured and held them hostage. The propagandists called on Ukrainian soldiers to lay down their arms and join the “liberation army.” The Russian Defense Ministry promised Ukrainians safe evacuation routes.

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“Dear Kyiv residents! Please note that all these days you have been forced to sit in shelters, subjected to stress, searched and shot at in your cars, detained on the streets and killed with one goal in mind - to identify saboteurs who were allegedly sent to the capital to assassinate Zelensky.”

To protect the capital, the Armed Forces blew up bridges, including the bridge between Bucha and Irpin. Under fire, without light, heat, or communication, Irpin residents tried to leave the city on their own and with the help of volunteers. On March 3, the “green” corridors were opened. Residents of Irpin and the surrounding towns were evacuated by the territorial defense military from the destroyed Romanivskyi Bridge.

In turn, Russian propaganda spread disinformation that the evacuation of Irpin was just a PR stunt by the authorities.

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“First, the Ukrainian armed forces bombed the bridge. Then the city authorities delayed the evacuation for 4 days. Today they gave the go-ahead to leave. They drove people under the bridge. We were waiting for Western journalists and Poroshenko. Now this is the photo of the day. Nobody cared about the fact that the bridge could fall at any moment.”

In reality, the Russians shelled the evacuation routes, often disrupting the evacuation. On March 5, 2022, Russian shelling damaged a railroad track, disrupting the evacuation by rail.

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Maksym Dondiuk, a native of Irpin and a photo documentary filmmaker, told on his Instagram how the evacuation actually took place and why people were hiding under the bridge: “This series of photographs depicts the situation that occurred on the blown-up bridge over the Irpin River. Thousands of people were standing under the bridge, the city was on fire in the background, soldiers were helping people evacuate, and at that moment the Russian army was ruthlessly shooting everyone. Dead bodies were everywhere, people were falling to the ground all the time and bending over in fear of the shelling. They were trying to escape from the Russian army, which was killing them in their town and continued to pursue them with mines and artillery even after they crossed the bridge [...]”.

Almost after every war crime committed by the Russian army against Ukrainian civilians, Russian propaganda in its information space talked about the shelling of Donbas by the Ukrainian military to shift the vector of conversations in the media. To spread such manipulations, propagandist Yulia Vityazeva used the cover of the American Time magazine with a photo of a Ukrainian family evacuating from Irpin. This photo was taken by Maxim Dondyuk.

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“Kira and Kristina Zhuk from Horlivka, killed by Ukraine - it was too much of a shock for Time magazine readers. And what do they care about Horlivka? They probably don't even know it exists.”

Such manipulations were intended to shift the focus and divert attention from the crimes of the Russian army, to confuse the roles of the victim and the aggressor in this war.

The total resistance of Ukrainians and the appearance of information in the media about the first crimes of the Russian army forced propagandists to shift responsibility for war crimes to the Ukrainian defense forces. They claimed that the “Kyiv regime” was using the local population as human shields; Kyiv residents were afraid to go out because the neo-Nazis had given everyone weapons. They claimed that a wave of looting and murder had engulfed Kyiv.

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“Kyiv reports that local Ukrainian saboteurs are starting to organize explosions in the yards of residential buildings. The aim is to create a disinformation picture for the Western media and to intimidate the population.”

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“Just keep in mind that the heavily armed Ukrainian Nazis, who have been driven into a dead end, may start killing Ukrainian civilians and present them as victims of Russian aggression.”

In fact, starting on January 1, 2022, territorial defense units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were created throughout Ukraine to prepare the population's resistance to possible Russian aggression. National resistance centers were set up to provide tactical medicine training and basic military training to civilians.

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The Ukrainian photographer Yulia Kochetova describes the people who initially stood up to defend their homeland at the call of their hearts: “Defenders. Kyiv residents join the territorial defense, local units that patrol the streets and protect the city. Among them are people with any military background. This is what touches me the most - when a man of peace became a man of war. It is not your job, but it is your choice to defend your city. To defend your people. To defend your land [...]”.

The enemy army did not expect resistance from Ukrainians. Russian soldiers were surrendering, and columns of Russian vehicles were burning on Ukrainian roads. Ukrainians in cities and towns held rallies to try to stop the Russian columns. In some places, men stopped and turned tanks around with their bare hands. The propagandists did not like this. They urged their military to be cruel to civilians, tried to hide their own losses and refute the achievements of Ukrainian defenders.

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“Propaganda fakes include the legend of the 'ghost of Kyiv', statements about the deaths of 11,000 Russian soldiers in just 11 days of fighting, and reports that Russian troops allegedly tried to disrupt the stability of nuclear materials in Chornobyl and Zaporizhzhia.“ (”Ukraina.ru")

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Photographer Serhiy Korovainyi tells the story of resistance, which actually took place not only in the northern part of Ukraine: “While Ukrainian forces were fighting to drive Russian troops out of the Kyiv region, Ukrainian villagers along Highway 7 were fighting in their own way: directing Ukrainian artillery along the vital route that Russia had mapped out for its attack on the capital. Risking their lives, the villagers shared tips and geolocation with local authorities, turning the highway between the Russian border and Kyiv into a major logistical setback for Moscow. The intelligence they collected helped the Ukrainian military destroy numerous Russian units. This strategy was met with fierce Ukrainian resistance, as villagers put themselves and their homes on the front lines, turning quiet rural life into a difficult and sometimes deadly coexistence with Russian troops.”

Kyiv was held by Ukrainian defenders who prevented an elite landing force from landing in Hostomel and prevented the Russians from passing through Irpin and Moshchun. The war for the capital continued for a month, and part of the region was occupied by the Russians. At the end of March, the Armed Forces of Ukraine began to push Russian troops out of the occupied territories of Kyiv region. On April 2, 2022, Ukrainian defenders de-occupied the entire Kyiv region.

“Regrouping of troops” and ‘gestures of goodwill’ were the terms used by the Russian leadership to describe the flight of its troops from the northern direction.

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“Russian Ministry of Defense: planned regrouping of troops is taking place in the Kyiv and Chernihiv directions, all the main tasks of the Russian Armed Forces in the Kyiv and Chernihiv directions have been completed.”

“Obviously, there was no plan to completely seize Ukraine. The Russians do not need victims at all in order to appear before their population as liberators, not occupiers,” wrote propagandist Yulia Vityazeva in her telegram channel. ”Kyiv could have been taken in three days, turning Ukraine into ruins and leaving nothing alive. But this is not our method.”

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“I can't even imagine what it was like in this place when there was shelling and fighting”

The propaganda called the cause of the total destruction in the Kyiv region the attempts of the Ukrainian army to recapture it, thus absolving the army of responsibility. It claimed that there was no need to defend Ukraine, and that the destruction of civilian infrastructure was due to resistance.

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“Destroyed churches on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital are the consequences of “de-occupation”, as Ukrainian propagandists call the return of part of the Kyiv region to Ukrainian control. This was preceded by inhumane shelling by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, including Orthodox churches. It was purposeful. Direct fire. This is their tactic - to destroy everything that ceases to be Ukraine.” (E-News news site).

The Kremlin spread fake news that the atrocities near Kyiv were committed not by the Russian military, but by the militants of the Islamic battalion “Crimea”; that the footage of the destruction in Kyiv was the result of Ukrainian air defense, and that the rest was staged by the “Kyiv regime”.

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“Dear Ukrainian filmmakers! If you are already involving older people in your production, then make your movies more like the truth! So that the efforts of these poor people are not in vain! An elderly woman comes down the stairs from a burning building by herself, and the sweater on her head and the rest of her clothes are clean. Only her hands are slightly dirty.”

The photographs of Pavlo Petrov, a photographer and head of the press center of the Main Department of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine in Kyiv, document the shelling of a residential high-rise building in the Obolon district of Kyiv on March 14, 2022. The building caught fire and was partially destroyed as a result of an enemy shell hit, killing two people. Rescuers rescued 15 people from the shelled building and evacuated 63 people.

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Pavel Petrov emotionally commented on the Russian crime against civilians on social media: “Kyiv. Obolon. Now. Civilians were killed as a result of enemy shelling. This is a residential building!!!”.

At the same time, numerous crimes committed by the Russian army in the Kyiv region were documented only after the de-occupation. Ukrainian and international documentary photographers entered the liberated towns and villages together with the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Their photographs were spread by foreign media. This is how the world community learned the truth about the nature of this war.
The military and the media were greeted by towns and villages ravaged by shelling, with looted houses, mass graves and dead civilians lying in the open. The roads were littered with shot civilian vehicles and Russian military equipment. Almost every house became a crime scene. During the month of occupation of Bucha, thousands of people died there. Even children were subjected to sexual violence.

The Russian authorities called it a provocation, while demonstrating to the world their “good intentions for negotiations.”

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“The Buchanan massacre was part of a Ukrainian special operation to dehumanize Russia in order to obtain weapons and impose new sanctions. However, such little things gradually add up to the bigger picture.”

Propagandists tried to refute the information coming from the de-occupied territories. They called the bloody events in Bucha “staged”.
One of the numerous fakes about the events in occupied Bucha states that the bodies look like they were killed recently.

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“Bucha. Hands. Or rather, palms. They are pink. I turned to a specialist with a question. The answer: After three days, the color of the skin, taking into account the ambient temperature, becomes bright yellow. Here, the color of the palms is frankly pink, only the fingers began to acquire a yellow tint, but this is due to the outflow of blood from the vessels, the fingers are wrinkled.”

However, if you look at the photo from different angles, this statement turns out to be unfounded. Ukrainian documentary photographer Mykhailo Palinchak visited Bucha with the Kyiv terrorist defense battalion. He took photos of the man with his hands tied from different angles.

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After the de-occupation of the Kyiv region, the events in Bucha became the main topic of foreign media.
“Detector Media tells about the investigations into the atrocities in Bucha by the Associated Press and The New York Times, which were published in November and December 2022.  
The investigation, prepared for the Associated Press by Erica Kintz, Oleksandr Stashevsky and Vasilisa Stepanenko, proves that the Russian military was hunting people on the lists of Russian special services. The New York Times' investigation confirms the thesis that the Russian military deliberately and systematically killed Ukrainians as part of Russia's systemic policy against Ukraine.

The cities and towns of Kyiv region have heroically defended the capital. The way to Kyiv for the Russians was through Borodyanka, Irpin and Moshchun. They were mercilessly shelled by the Russian army.

Some settlements were almost completely destroyed by shelling. The once cozy towns of Borodianka and Irpin are among the most destroyed in the Kyiv region. There were fierce battles, airplane bombardments, and artillery attacks. More than 40 residents died under the rubble of high-rise buildings in Borodyanka. The Russian military did not allow the rubble to be removed, shooting people with firearms.

And the Kremlin authorities traditionally denied all accusations.

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“Let me remind you: The Russian Armed Forces are destroying only military infrastructure in Ukraine, and the allegations of bombing in Kyiv and other cities are a lie. Ukraine urgently needs to close the skies and thus draw NATO into the war. And if they need to destroy half of Ukraine to do so, they will do it.”

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A native of Borodianka, photographer Heorhiy Ivanchenko told us how he saw his native land after its liberation: “My native Okruzhnaya street with the restaurant “Sasha's”, my father's spare parts store and constant traffic has turned into oblivion, ashes, nothing. The city center is ruined, the house of culture with the bowed head of Taras Hryhorovych with a shard in his forehead, tilting his bust towards the burnt, destroyed houses, where the corpses of civilians who thought they were safe are still under the rubble [...].”

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Ukrainian visual storyteller Oleksiy Furman says he decided to document the Kyiv region from a drone to better show the extent of the destruction: “When I was photographing Kyiv, I realized that it is very difficult to show the scale of destruction with photos from the ground. You often need a higher vantage point to get an idea of how much a neighborhood or village has been destroyed. That's why I decided to get a drone so I could take it with me wherever I go. Today I took pictures in Bucha and Irpin. The destruction in Irpin, where we have already visited, is unprecedented. The whole neighborhood of private houses is almost completely destroyed. The neighboring residential buildings are very badly damaged, with traces of massive fires. I can't even imagine what it was like in this place when there was shelling and fighting.”

But the resonant events in the Kyiv region did not end there. The Chornobyl nuclear power plant, which suffered the largest disaster in the history of nuclear energy in 1986, became another crime scene for the Russian army. The Russians entered the plant from Belarus on the first day of the invasion, taking about 300 people hostage.
More than a month of occupation of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant was an alarming time not only for Ukrainians but for the whole of Europe. However, propaganda presented this event as a salutary one.

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“Everything is calm and under control at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. This fact literally shakes the Ukrainian neo-Nazis. Europe should bow to Russia for depriving the monkeys of the opportunity to pull the trigger on this 'grenade'. But let's do without gratitude. The main thing is that now we can sleep peacefully at least about this.”

While in the exclusion zone, the occupiers filled bags for fortifications with radioactive sand and dug up radiation-contaminated soil with their bare hands.
On March 31, 2022, the Russians left the exclusion zone after robbing the station and mining the area around it.

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The State Agency of Ukraine for Exclusion Zone Management reported that the offices and laboratory of the Institute for Nuclear Power Plant Safety Problems were looted and destroyed. The Russians took computers and office equipment; laboratory equipment and measuring devices were broken or destroyed. The radiation sources and some of the fuel from the laboratories were probably taken away as “souvenirs.”

Ukrainian documentary filmmaker Viacheslav Ratynskyi documented the restricted facility in the spring of 2023, a year after the liberation from the occupiers. He told the Ukrainian Association of Professional Photographers how the station's employees felt a year later:

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“The NPP workers now, in addition to the anniversary of the disaster, remember the occupation with horror,” says Vyacheslav, “they spent the entire month of the occupation as hostages of the Russians. In terrible conditions, without food and often with limited access to water. I had the impression that even a year after the occupation, they were still experiencing everything that had happened and were quite depressed.”‍

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"It's not your job, but it's your choice to defend your city. To protect your people. To protect your land."

Three years of struggle, bravery and pain have passed. Over the past years, the goals of the “special operation” have been as follows: to capture the entire Donbas, to demilitarize southern Ukraine; Russia is at war with NATO, not Ukraine. However, Russia has not been able to achieve any of the goals it stated at the beginning of the invasion.

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“So far, it can only be stated that in three years the final fascization of the Ukrainian government has taken place: the Russian language is banned, the canonical Orthodox Church is outlawed, the opposition has been completely purged, and monuments related to Russia, its history, science and culture have been pogromed across the country.“ (”Ukraine.ru").

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Russia has been trying to force Ukraine to peace on its own terms through terror tactics: strikes on the energy system, massive shelling, nighttime drone terror, demonstration strikes on civilian targets, and demonstration executions of captured Ukrainian soldiers.

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“The conversation about the humane nature of the Joint Forces Operation inevitably stalls on the question of whether such a strategy is justified, because this style of warfare necessarily affects the overall course of the operation and its pace.“ (”Ukraina.ru").

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Russia is manipulating the issue of peace agreements to bargain for the occupied territories and buy time for a new phase of the war. This was the case with the Minsk agreements, which Russia itself sabotaged.

Nebenzya, who at the beginning of the offensive stated in the international arena that Russia was not planning to occupy Ukrainian territories, now says the opposite.

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“Ukraine has lost the DPR, LPR, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions forever,” Nebenzya stated.

The Kremlin is resorting to the tactics it used at the beginning of its aggression against Ukraine in 2014 - making the victim look like the aggressor. The Russians are trying to deceive the entire civilized world with peacekeeping slogans, to persuade the West to condemn the resistance that Ukrainians are putting up to the aggressor. Propaganda convinces us that the continuation of the war is beneficial only to the authorities in Kyiv.

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“The problem with denazification is that its full implementation will be possible only where there is no Zelenskyy government or his direct political heirs.“ (”Ukraina.ru").

However, Ukraine does not need peace agreements that are not backed by any security guarantees. After all, the war of aggression that Russia has waged against Ukrainians is actually aimed at destroying Ukrainian identity.

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“Before the start of the special operation, it was believed that Russophobia among Ukrainians was a matter of Lviv, neo-Nazi and Banderite groups, but the events of the SVE showed that this worldview has grown deeper. This brings the special operation to a new level of tasks, where instead of one separate hostile political regime, we have to deal with an equally hostile population.“ (”Ukraine.ru").
The bloody events of March 2022 in the Kyiv region are a reminder to the world who is the victim and who is the aggressor in this war, who must finally be punished.

The joint efforts of the Defense Forces, rescuers, volunteers and ordinary Ukrainians managed to resist the Russian army, hold the capital and liberate the region. On their shoulders, Ukraine has been holding on for three years. And on the shoulders of Ukrainian documentary filmmakers rests the truth about this war.

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"The worst thing I saw while working in Kyiv region was on the very first day of our work, April 2. It was a section of the Zhytomyr highway between Mriya and Myla, the “road of death”. “There were burnt cars and burnt bodies next to them,” Oleksiy Furman shares his memories, ”and a pile of bodies on both sides of the road, which the Russians probably tried to burn. I took a picture, but did not publish it - such shots should be used at the trial in The Hague, but they are “off limits” for publication in the media.”

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We worked on the material:
Researcher of the topic, author of the text: Yana Yevmenova
Editorial director: Olga Kovaleva
Literary editor: Yulia Futey
Website manager: Vladyslav Kukhar