This documentary reveals to some extend the situation for the separatists in Donbas - and it actually gives some nuance to the motives that Russia had for the 2014 intervention and the special military operation/invasion in 2022. It touches on the NATO-enlargement, which is a historical fact that is usually ignored in the West ... and it reports the Kiev-governments bombings on the separatist territory since 2014; bombings and killings we never hear of in the West.
On several occasions the interviewing/journalism in depth is rather poor; Lanagan is often more interested in the russian aggressions in Ukraine than the Kiev-governments aggressions i Donbas. He never pursuits the story of a population that the coup/revolution in 2014 ignored and damned as russian agents while attacking and subordinating them. All this is well documented, but Lanagans curiosity isn't really there. In that perspective, he might as well could have stayed home in safe London.
Lanagan also gets a possibility to investigate the other side of the Bucha story - which was called a genocide by the Kiev-government and by western powers (until they realised that massacres/warcrimes was a more realistic accusation), but he avoids this by proposing that it's not safe to talk further on ... and then he clings on to the western narrative. That is not quality journalism, but epistemological information control according to Lanagan's ideological narrative.
The best in this documentary is the depiction of the frontlines, Lanagan visits - and some political diversity (which Lanagan notoriously calls 'cracks') amongst the Donbas fighters. Lanagan touches briefly on this, but he's not reflecting on the historical view he's offered from 'the other side' ... and most notably he is not interested in the reasons for the civil uprise in eastern Ukraine after the coup in Kiev, 2014. Why, I don't know ... but it could be caused by his western cultivation which urges him to believe and enforce that 'the other side' mostly is dark. Whatever, these projections/prejudgments and the bias surely kicks down the quality ... but still I recommend everyone to watch it; it is far better and more informative than most of the western input on the matter.
