Antony Butts and Orysia Lutsevych

As part of the Documenting Ukraine festival held on Saturday 17 and Sunday 18 May in partnership with Open City Docs and GRAD, the Frontline Club screened the UK premiere of Anthony Butts’ work in progress: The Curious Tale of a Handmade Country.

With astonishing access, Butts followed and filmed Ukrainian rebels in the east of the country as they attempted to establish the Donetsk People’s Republic.

After the screening, Butts was joined by journalists Nataliya Gumenyuk and Oliver Carroll and Chatham House fellow Orysia Lutsevych for an in-depth discussion. The conversation touched upon economic grievances, propaganda and the escalation of the conflict.The first question from an audience member was on how Butts succeeded in gaining such impressive and unfettered access to a world that was reluctant to welcome journalists, and feared misrepresentation by the media.

“First off, I said that I was making a big documentary about the creation of the country, so that kind of appealed to people’s egos,” said Butts, adding that being a documentary filmmaker awarded him a more privileged identity than that of a reporter.

He built trust with the key figures in his documentary by finding common ground.

“I was actually sort of saying, ‘I’m kind of with you on this class war thing’,” Butts said. “‘I’m fed up of oligarchs as well taking over London’… so I was able to speak about what we had in common.”

The film provided a snapshot of a unique period of time. Carroll, who was talking to the Frontline Club audience via Skype from Donetsk, remembered the conflicting atmospheres.

“[Watching the film] brought a lot of memories back from that very strange time in the city,” he said. “Despite, as you saw in the film, the immense violence and tension that was happening there, there was also a sort of weird carnival element to it all.”

The rebels had a high level of support in the region, Carroll explained.

“A lot of people genuinely support the idea of this Luhansk, Donetsk People’s Republic, and in a sort of anti-Kiev, self-identity, self-fulfilment type of way. And I think that’s increasing,” he said.

Those who did not feel pulled by the prospects of self-determination, Carroll said, were pushed “for right or wrong” by the belief that Ukraine was shelling their cities.

“The understanding is that it’s the Ukrainians firing, and in understanding that they’re firing on us, well you know, we can’t be part of this Ukrainian system anymore.”

2nd Day of films @frontlineclub started with an impressive one about ‘DNR’. @Orysiaua @ngumenyuk at postshow talk now pic.twitter.com/j3psGRQc0N

— Ukrainian London (@UkrainianLondon) May 17, 2015

The Euromaidan protests held similar goals to those initial aims of the Donetsk People’s Republic. “The same economic problems were in Odesssa, in Western Ukraine, in many other regions which hadn’t been heard by the government in 25 years,” said Gumenyuk.

However, the region was already relatively politically disenfranchised in Kiev before the events in Euromaidan and, as Carroll explained, Russia seized the opportunity to exploit this existing divide.

“Kiev played its hand very badly,” he said. “It needed to be a lot more unpredictable than it was. But at the same time it was falling into traps, but the traps were being placed there for it.”

“I have actually great sympathy to the people portrayed in this movie,” said Gumenyuk. “They were speaking against the oligarchs, while we definitely knew that, for instance, these same rallies were funded by the same oligarchs.”

The film also commented on the influence of Russian state television on the protests, yet Lutsevych told the audience of other ways that propaganda made its way across the border.

On one visit to Ukraine, her translator told Lutsevych that Russian DJs touring Eastern Ukraine were warning their audiences of threats of fascism from Kiev. “They’re coming with their popular concerts and trying to say these kinds of things to people,” she said.

Lutsevych spoke out about the “dangerous” way in which Russia was “manipulating millions of people” into the current conflict, citing evidence that the Kremlin had plans to stoke a rebellion even before Euromaidan started.

“Yes, Russia is being a baddie,” said Butts. “[But] from their point of view they’ve good geopolitical reasons to do so… it’s like the Monroe Doctrine for the Americans, it’s just the way [they believe] the world works. The question is how do we combat it?”

“There was a moment when the [rebel’s revolution] would have burnt itself out… I think that that war could have been prevented because Russia, as I said, is using every trick in its book. But it takes two to tango. The people [in Donetsk] were reacting to something.”

“If Ukrainian TV hadn’t demonised [the rebels],” said Butts, “… if they had laid off them a bit and sort of said, ‘we hear you guys, ok? You’re protesting in your strange way, we’re with you’… There would have been less anger on the ground.”

However, other members of the panel put the cause of conflict squarely down to Russian intervention in the country.

“In the movie, ethnic issues didn’t come up a single time,” said Lutsevych, “which was quite interesting. They didn’t say, ‘they will come here and make us speak Ukrainian and they will kill all our Soviet heroes’… it was more ideological.”

Importantly for Lutsevych, there was no existing internal conflict or civil war within Ukraine before Russia began to intervene. “I think this is even more scary when you think how easily you can create these artificial divisions,” she said.

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By Josie Le Blond 

On Saturday 16 May, the Frontline Club held a special screening of shorts and clips reflecting on the Euromaidan movement in Ukraine as part of the two-day Documenting Ukraine festival.

The short films – extracts from the longer work Euromaidan. Rough Cut – trace the efforts of a group of Ukrainian filmmakers who documenting several months of civil unrest, beginning in Autumn 2013 and culminating in the resignation of President Yanukovych in February 2014.

The resulting clips form a mosaic of images and moments which, put together, allow a powerful insight into life on the Maidan barricades.

The screening began with the short film Lenin’s Teeth, in which activists tear down a statue of Lenin during Maidan protests in Kiev in December 2013.

Then followed filmmaker Roman Bondarchuk‘s short Search for a Leader, showing discussions between activists as they attempt to self-organise which trapped in a police cordon on a bitterly cold winter’s night.

All Things Ablaze followed, which documents the violent struggles between police and activists in the weeks preceding Yanukovych’s resignation, in which flames, gunshots, molotov cocktails and bloodshed are regular features.

The following discussion with filmmakers and academics touched upon the challenges faced by the filmmakers, as well as their motivations in documenting the Maidan protests.

Filmmaker Roman Bondarchuk presented his reasoning: “For me, the biggest challenge was to film or to throw stones. I realised that filming was more useful.”

This screening will be followed by a panel discussion with director Misja Pekel, writers Ben Judah and Peter Pomerantsev, and journalist Richard Gizbert.

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The rocket that shot down flight MH17 was actually intended for Vladimir Putin’s plane. That is, if we were to believe the headline Russia Today (RT) was running in the first hours after the tragedy. The disaster with the Malaysian Airlines flight wasn’t the first time the news channel stirred controversy with its reporting. In November of 2014, Ofcom gave RT a warning for impartial reporting on the uprising in Maidan Square in Kiev.

The channel was launched in 2005 under the name Russia Today to bring the Russian perspective on world events to a global audience. Almost ten years later, RT broadcasts in five languages and can be received almost all over the world. It is now the biggest news organisation on YouTube with 2 billion views, more then CNN and BBC together.

Its critics call it a bullhorn for Russian propaganda, RT claims only to show a different perspective on world events, and presents itself as an alternative to the mainstream media. In Misja Pekel’s The World According to Russia Today, current and former employees, journalists and media analysts dissect RT’s modus operandi. What is it like to work for the channel? How much influence does the Kremlin really have? And is it possible to discern between fact and opinion when Russian interests are at stake?

Directed by Misja Pekel
Duration: 40′
Year: 2015

The Panel:

Ben Judah is the author of Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In And Out Of Love With Vladimir Putin published by Yale University Press.

Peter Pomerantsev is an author, TV producer, and Senior Fellow at the Legatum Institute. Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, his book about working in Russian media, was released by Faber in February. It has been short listed for the Pushkin House Award for Russia books, and was a BBC Book of the Week.

Richard Gizbert is a Canadian broadcast journalist. He is the presenter of the Listening Post on Al Jazeera English. Over the past 25 years, he has covered stories in more than 50 countries on five continents.

When Anastasia Taylor-Lind arrived in central Kiev on 1 February 2014, Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) was under siege, surrounded by police loyal to the government. Rising tensions culminated in the worst day of violence on 20 February and the following day President Yanokovych fled Ukraine. In all, three months of protests resulted in 112 confirmed dead, and many more missing.

Taylor-Lind’s portraits have been uniformly shot against the black backdrop of her improvised studio, removing them from the context of the barricades just a few feet away. The ‘fighters’ are identified by their homemade body armour, and the ‘mourners’ by the bunches of flowers they have brought to pay their respects to the dead. Captured with an air of stillness and reflection, these photographs show the individuals involved in, and impacted by, the unrest.

Taylor-Lind will be joined in conversation by Olivier Laurent, the editor of TIME’s LightBox.

Maidan – Portraits from the Black Square will be published in its entirety by GOST Books in July 2014. Join Taylor-Lind for the official launch and signing on the book at the club on Thursday 24 July, from 6:30PM. For more details, see here.

Anastasia Taylor-Lind and Olivier Laurent will be delivering a day-long workshop looking at engaging with social media for photographers at the Frontline Club on Saturday 16 August 2014, 10:00AM – 5:00PM. For more details, see here.

All images © Anastasia Taylor-Lind

IWPR had already relocated Haider and her family to Damascus after an earlier death threat.  Why Haideri decided to go back to Mosul (she wasn’t on assignment) is unclear, but whatever her reasons the gunmen were waiting for her.

In Afghanistan, within days of Sahar’s murder, Zakia Zaki was shot dead while sleeping in her own home with her 8 month old son and Sanga Amach, a 22 year-old presenter was murdered close to her new western-backed TV station. As those who promote safety in journalism are pleading for more support to train local journalists, these murders underline the terrible truth that no amount of training can stop contract killings of local journalists.

The gunmen and their paymasters know they won’t be arrested or put on trial and that the surest way to stop reporting they don’t like is to kill the messenger. And it can be no coincidence that women journalists were targeted in countries where forces with a perverted view of Islam have decided to end the role of women in media. Beyond wringing of hands and despairing there are hard questions for organisations and governments that finance and train local journalists. And what responsibilities do they have to provide lifetime support to the families left behind?

IWPR has already made an initial contribution and established a “Sahar Journalists Assistance Fund” but the wanton killing of local journalists may mean a restructuring of the IWPR training programme. Tony Borden, IWPR’s Executive Director, says he is “faced with the dilemma of death or despair, to continue or give up.”

Is it time that more effort to engage the powers that be to nurture independent journalism? At the very least those officials whose duty it is to uphold the law must commit to bringing those who kill with impunity to justice.

The Frontline Event in Kiev was a debate about the performance of the Ukrainian media since the Orange Revolution but there was no mention of Gyorgy Gongadze’s beheading 7 years ago. Most press groups believe he was murdered for his harsh criticism of the Kuchma government. Despite international pressure and plenty of suspects it’s unlikely that anyone will be prosecuted. And will Sahar al-Haideri’s or the Afghan journalists’ murderers ever pay for their crimes. What can be done?  That’s the question that no press rights group can answer.

IWPR is a not-for-profit media organisation that trains local journalists in conflict and post-conflict areas since establishing itself during the wars in the where until recently I served as a trustee.