After two and a half years of brutal aggression and growing evidence of war crimes committed by Russian soldiers, some people abroad still cling to the hope that the reality of what’s happening in Ukraine isn't as grim as it seems: a nation of nearly 150 million people can’t possibly support the invasion of its neighbor and Russian soldiers have no choice but to obey orders – it’s Vladimir Putin’s war.
But the reality is grim. People need to come to terms with the fact that a seemingly ordinary man with a family, with his own hopes and dreams, can also take part in the invasion of a country where he commits acts of torture, rape, and murder. It is this capacity for cruelty — his ability to suppress his humanity, if it ever truly existed — that makes him so terrifying.
Hannah Arendt famously explored this unsettling truth in her 1963 book, “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.” Against the backdrop of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a high-ranking Nazi official who helped to orchestrate the logistics of the Holocaust, Arendt wrote about how evil manifests itself not in monstrous aberrations that belong to the realm of fairy tales but in individuals who choose to follow horrific orders without much hesitation or introspection.
The world’s failure to fully comprehend the threat Russia poses has allowed apologists for genocide to find a platform within some of the world’s most esteemed cultural institutions. A documentary film that attempts “through the fog of war” to “humanize” Russian soldiers fighting a war of aggression against Ukraine has not only been screened recently at the Venice Film Festival and will soon be shown at the Toronto Film Festival, but reportedly also received funding from the Canadian government.
The director of “Russians at War,” Canadian-Russian filmmaker Anastasia Trofimova, claims that she “secretly” embedded with Russian troops fighting in their war of aggression against Ukraine without getting permission from the Russian Defense Ministry. (Maybe her contacts at Russian state-controlled RT, which produced several of her previous documentaries, fizzled out?) In press coverage for the film, she spoke about not wanting to “judge” the Russian soldiers and discovering that they were “absolutely ordinary guys with a sense of humor.” The interviewers just listen and nod.
It's unsettling to hear such statements, especially after seeing photos of Yaroslav Bazylevych at the funeral of his wife and three daughters who were killed in the Sept. 4 Russian attack on Lviv, a city in the west of Ukraine. It's surreal after speaking with the friends of Nika Kozhushko, a talented 18-year-old artist killed in the Aug. 30 Russian strike on Kharkiv, a city in the east of Ukraine. It's outright maddening while an air raid siren wails in the background. Surely, we must inhabit two different worlds.
Though I have yet to view the full documentary, the commentary from those who attended its screening at the Venice Film Festival, combined with the footage available in the online trailer, started to paint a pretty clear picture. Nothing that I’ve heard or seen suggests it’s an “anti-war film.” In the trailer, for example, one soldier claims that Ukraine and Russia are "inseparable" and that he misses the "brotherly union." This conveniently overlooks the reality that, in both the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, the Russian language and culture dominated. Throughout different periods in history, this dominance was enforced through the violent subjugation of Ukrainians and other groups. What this soldier is actually expressing is nostalgia for an era when the Ukrainian nation-state was denied the right to exist.
Nothing that I’ve heard or seen suggests it’s an “anti-war film.”
And how are Russians trying to prove to Ukrainians that they are “brotherly nations”? By launching ballistic missiles and drones that kill civilians, reducing cities to rubble, occupying cities, taking those living under occupation who resist for some "reeducation" in basements, raping women and children, executing Ukrainian soldiers taken prisoner, sending abducted Ukrainian children to the far reaches of Russia… The scale of Russian war crimes committed in Ukraine is staggering, with the Prosecutor General’s Office documenting 141,739 cases to date. As long as the full-scale war continues, that number will only continue to grow.
Trofimova, the director of “Russians at War,” has publicly stated that she witnessed no war crimes being committed during her time on the front line. But what is she suggesting — that the survivors of these atrocities are somehow mistaken? Are their testimonies to be valued less than her own? By making such claims, she engages in a dangerous narrative, sowing doubt in what should be a clear and undeniable truth: Russia is conducting a genocide against Ukraine, and those who carry it out must be held accountable.
Wanting to “look through the fog of war” and “humanize” these Russian soldiers is only meant to portray them in a sympathetic light. Are we supposed to say, “Sure, Misha raped a Ukrainian woman in front of her small children, but he has kids of his own back home, so he can’t be all that bad, right?”
In the war against Ukraine, Russian soldiers made a conscious choice to participate, just as they and their fellow citizens chose to allow Russian President Vladimir Putin to remain in power and oversee the rise of an increasingly authoritarian regime. While some Russian families claim “indifference” to politics, others are deeply entrenched in the state propaganda that floods their television screens, so much so that they are willing to report their own sons for attempting to flee the country and evade military service. The vast majority of Russians bear responsibility for this war. It is not solely Putin’s war — it is theirs as well.
To describe Russian soldiers as mere "tools in a larger political game," as Trofimova suggests, edges dangerously close to echoing the very talking points propagated by the Russian government — claims like Russia's supposed right to invade in order to halt NATO’s encroachment on its "sphere of influence."
It’s not always the bombastic voices on state-controlled television shouting about taking Kyiv in three days that pose the greatest threat. More nefarious are the seemingly neutral voices — those who claim to be “just asking questions,” with no allegiance but to the truth. These quiet skeptics, who foster uncertainty in an otherwise clear-cut narrative, can ultimately inflict the most harm. The moment we begin to blur the truth is the very moment when falsehoods risk becoming accepted as reality.
It is our responsibility to categorically reject any attempts to excuse or rehabilitate the Russian war crimes being committed in Ukraine, and to ensure that the suffering of Russia’s victims is neither forgotten nor minimized — it’s the very least we can do for the tens of thousands of Ukrainians whose lives they stole and destroyed.
The opinions expressed in the op-ed section are those of the authors and do not purport to reflect the views of the Kyiv Independent.
