Miguel Francis Santiago and Alexander Panov, “Donetsk: An American Glance” (RT Documentary, 2014)
Cheerful LA film graduate and investigative journalist Miguel Francis Santiago, fresh from filming his travelogue “Crimea for Dummies” journeys on to Donetsk, one of the two major cities in eastern Ukraine where civil war has raged between Ukrainian government army forces and separatist rebels since April 2014. With so much contradictory information and propaganda pouring from the Western news media about the situation in eastern Ukraine, much of it emanating from the Ukrainian government itself, and with an agenda to discredit Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin in particular, the only way to find out anything resembling the truth is to visit the area and talk to the local people, and this our hero MFS does with his open and frank manner that encourages others to warm to him. The aim of the film is to investigate and verify Kyiv and Western news media claims that Putin has sent Russian army troops into eastern Ukraine to wage war on the Ukrainian army.
MFS appears to be based mostly in Donetsk City for the making of this film and a tidy and attractive city it looks too, even under duress of bombing, with plenty of city gardens and green space. The streets are spacious though empty and a few people can be seen pounding the pavements. Even trolley-buses, recent targets of the Ukrainian army, are gliding along. Damage to the streets and buildings is being repaired by city workers as best as they can. One of the first individuals we meet is Veselina, commander of a separatist division, who features throughout the film so one assumes that MFS is more or less attached to – or embedded with – her group. She tells the reporter that she gave up her regular work to fight with the rebels and that her desire is to ensure that the people she knows and loves all survive the war. Her men are loyal to her and respect her experience, leadership and judgement.
With Veselina’s division, MFS meets a young woman desperate to rescue her grandmother who stubbornly refuses to leave her home in spite of the bombing around her and a small opera company in Donetsk city trying to maintain a busy schedule of rehearsals and performances to keep up the citizens’ spirits. MFS then trails another commander, Givi, who shows him what remains of Sergey Prokofiev International Airport in Donetsk, once the most modern airport in eastern Ukraine: the entire complex has been destroyed and all that is left is endless ruin. MFS talks to people living close to the war front, several of them forced to live in basements where among other things they celebrate a young man’s birthday. What MFS sees and hears, and what civilians tell him, are all too much for the journalist to bear and the film concludes with MFS doing his grunge guitar thang, singing his heart out to the world and expressing his anguish and rage that senseless war is being visited on Donetsk and other places in eastern Ukraine.
MFS never does find Russian troops in and around Donetsk, and local people tell him they have never seen Russian soldiers either. All the fighting against the Ukrainian army is by local people, all Ukrainians speaking Ukrainian dialects of Russian. One man condemns Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko for bringing war and suffering to Donetsk.
It is possible that by only visiting Donetsk, MFS has received a biased point of view about the war in eastern Ukraine and that if he had gone to places like Lugansk, Kramatorsk and Mariupol, he might have seen Russian troops on eastern Ukrainian soil. The people he talks to seem genuine enough: they are all ordinary people employed in jobs like mining, carpentry, various professions and farming, and all have felt compelled to take up arms against Kyiv to defend and preserve their language, culture and land. The spirit and independence of the people of Donetsk city and region are prominent and infectious, and at the end of the film I can’t help but cheer them on and hope that they succeed in retaining their land and identity.
Yes, this is a propaganda film; in the midst of war, in which two opposed sides claim to possess the truth, seeking and claiming “balance” in viewpoint is impossible. One cannot be “impartial”, one must decide who to believe and not to believe, who is right and who is not, based on the evidence and facts found. MFS has bravely put his life and beliefs on the line to bring what he believes is the truth and it certainly does not reflect well on Western news media, our governments and ultimately us that we may be the ones supporting forces inimical to democracy and good governance.
Yet even in an awful and brutal war such as this civil war against the people of Donetsk, the human spirit, as exemplified by the Donetsk people’s cheerfulness, communal spirit and determination to carry on as normal, keeping their city clean and comfortable and performing music and opera, is radiant and shines through the terrible destruction.