Putin’s new Crimea documentary is the ultimate scripted reality
The new Putin Crimea documentary (“Crimea: The Way Home”) is a slick piece of documentary filmmaking — combining historical footage from events over the past year in Ukraine, historical re-enactments of key scenes that led to Russia re-taking Crimea one year ago, interviews with top Crimean officials and local heroes, and most importantly, an extended interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
But the documentary is an even slicker piece of Russian “scripted reality,” combining all the greatest hits of Russia’s propaganda about Ukraine over a period of two and one-half hours, told in an entertaining and compelling way. Suffice it to say that there are scenes of crazed Ukrainian nationalists burning buses and plenty of references to the West instigating a coup in Kiev with specific language and sentiment that hews closely to the Kremlin line on what went down in Crimea.
The trailer for Putin’s new Crimea documentary, released just days before the premiere on Russian TV on March 15, had already produced a bombshell effect in Western capitals, in the form of Putin “confessing” in an interview clip with Andrey Kondrashov that the decision to annex Crimea had been taken on the night of February 22, well before the March 16 referendum that resulted in Crimea being returned to Russia.
There are at least five other elements in “Crimea: The Way Home” that are almost certain to piss off diplomats in Washington and Brussels. Or at least Jen Psaki.
Russia is never giving Crimea back, ever
Let’s start with the title: “Crimea: The Way Home.” In a literal translation of the Russian title, it’s more precisely translated as “Crimea: The Path Back to the Motherland.” This implies that Crimea has been — and always will be — part of Russia. It’s not so much Russia wresting away something that has never belonged to it, but merely reclaiming possession over the peninsula. Bottom line for the West: Russia is never, ever giving Crimea back.
The “Crimean Spring” was a reaction to the coup in Kiev
Then, there’s the matter of how to describe what exactly went down in Crimea last February and March. Was it an “annexation,” an “incorporation,” an “accession,” or a “unification”? Well, this new documentary has the answer — all the events took place as part of the “Crimean Spring,” so that means it must have been a “unification.”
In such a way, the documentary positions the events in Crimea in the same way as the “Arab Spring” events in the Middle East or — as the natural uprising of people against their unlawful and unscrupulous masters. It was not an “act of aggression” by an external state — it was the voice of the people being expressed in a great uprising of democracy.
Russia is willing and able to use the nuclear option
Maybe it’s all a bit of bluster, but Vladimir Putin tells Kondrashov in the documentary that Russia was willing to use the “nuclear option” to protect Crimea. At some point, he was willing to put Russia’s strategic nuclear forces on high alert if it meant protecting Russian interests in Crimea. So it’s perhaps no surprise that Russia is now blustering about returning nukes to Crimea. Because, well, nobody messes with a nuclear-armed peninsula.
Putin is the ultimate unreliable narrator for the West
Or, how about the fact that Vladimir Putin claims that he was personally orchestrating the events in Crimea, including the evacuation of deposed Ukrainian leader Yanukovych? Putin said that he had personal radio contact with the team leading Yanukovych’s evacuation, and was personally overseeing the deployment of the “little green men” in Crimea. This is going to play big at home, where Russians want a strong leader.
In the West, perhaps the closest example of a top leader personally overseeing such a high-profile operation is when Obama and members of his team (including Hillary Clinton) were personally watching the takedown of Osama Bin Laden via a live video feed.
But consider this — the whole documentary is basically Russian President Vladimir Putin narrating what happened in February and March 2014. Sure, there is airtime given to Russian Defense Minister Shoigu and all the local Crimean heroes, but the narrative is completely driven by Putin. He’s narrating history, telling the West exactly how he did it.
Russian propaganda’s scripted reality is actually entertaining
“Crimea: The Way Home” has the feel of a History Channel documentary, with historical reenactments spliced together with brief interviews with key supporting players to give depth to the extended Putin commentary. It’s a strange mix of theatricality, melodrama and nationalism. You do get the impression that just about everyone in Crimea wanted this to happen.
There’s also the appearance of Russian propaganda’s stock characters — hard-working Crimean Tatars eager to rejoin Russia, members of the nationalist motorcycle group “Night Wolves,” everyday Crimeans trudging off to battle evil usurpers from Kiev with their riot shields painted a patriotic red, white and blue for Russia and the appearance of the very lovely Crimean public prosecutor Natalia Poklonskaya (who sits down for tea with Kondrashov on a hill overlooking the Black Sea near the end of the documentary). There’s even a Crimean blacksmith who’s working in some kind of underground forge to make all those aluminum riot shields for the heroic people of Ukraine.
For Russia-watchers such as Peter Pomerantsev (author of “Nothing is True and Everything is Possible”) concerned that Russian propaganda already is a form of “scripted reality” — this is going to be yet more proof that Russia is bringing some pretty slick TV production values to its propaganda efforts.
Crimea, they’ll say, is just one big scripted reality show for the Kremlin. Consider that partial interviews were conducted in a charred-out bus. Another interview takes place on a desolate-looking dried-up seabed (blamed on Kiev, of course). The documentary ends, of course, with the sun rising over the Black Sea and a triumphant note of hope.
Throughout the documentary, Putin takes special pains to point out that Russian troops were used sparingly as part of a defensive military operation — and that leaves NATO looking very bad by way of comparison. How did they not see this coming? No wonder NATO is spooked now that a similar type of operation involving “little green men” (Russia prefers to call them “polite people”) could happen just about anywhere in Europe.
With this new Crimea documentary, Russia is essentially writing history and disseminating its version of the events around the world. Already there are plans to distribute Putin’s new Crimean documentary in other languages. During the live airing of the program on Russian TV, commercial advertisements were basically limited to previews of new historic film projects coming up, including one on the “hero city” of Sevastopol.
History, as they say, belongs to the victors, and Russia is basically telling the West: We won, and we’re going to tell you exactly what happened. In the age of YouTube and the Internet as a rich visual medium, Russian TV is turning out be a remarkably powerful tool. Already, there have been over 2 million YouTube views for the documentary in just under 48 hours since it was aired.
