A film that highlights the war in Ukraine through the eyes of Russian soldiers is being accused of being little more than state-sponsored Russian propaganda. More infuriatingly to some, $250,000 of the funding came from the Canadian government, reported the Kyiv Independent. And "Ukraine's consul-general in Toronto, Oleh Nikolenko, has urged the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) to remove a documentary centering Russian soldiers fighting on the front lines in Ukraine."

An opinion piece in the Kyiv Independent summed it up well, with dripping sarcasm: Russian soldiers in Ukraine are ‘ordinary guys’ who commit horrific war crimes

Source: New York Post

A documentary accused of portraying Russian soldiers as victims and legitimizing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sparked outrage at film festivals in Venice and Toronto.

Russian-Canadian documentary filmmaker Anastasia Trofimova’s “Russians at War,” which follows soldiers through seven months of war, premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Wednesday.

“It’s so confusing here,” one soldier states in the film. “I don’t even know what we’re fighting for.”

“Russia and Ukraine have always been inseparable,” said another. “I miss the brotherly union.”

Critics say the comments propagate the false narrative pushed by Russian President Vladimir Putin that Ukraine cannot exist as an independent state.

Trofimova also pushed back on the charges that Russians were committing war crimes on an unprecedented level, saying she never witnessed that during her time embedded with its troops.

“To me, the biggest shock was to see how ordinary they were,” she said, according to Euronews.

“In Russia, they are these heroes who never die,” she said. “In the West, they are mostly war criminals, war criminals, war criminals.”

Trofimova also addressed her work for RT News, saying she never worked for the News section, just the documentary channel.

Trofimova told the Globe and Mail on Sunday that she used to work for the RT Documentary channel that is separate from RT News, with a focus on the Middle East, and left for the CBC after “the relatively liberal atmosphere in which we were working started to change.”

RT has been banned from Canadian airwaves and in other western countries. A U.S. Justice Department indictment unsealed last week accuses RT employees of covertly funding American content creation companies to spread Russian propaganda about Ukraine and influence the 2024 U.S. election.

Russians at War marks Trofimova’s first feature-length work. Her biography on TIFF’s website does not mention her RT background.

Trofimova argues that we must humanize the Russians.

We've seen this song & dance before.