Anthony McIntyre ✒ A friend highly recommended that I see this. His take on it: “well worth the watching” and “powerful.” 


On both counts I agree with him. Not long after his message coming through last night, I sat down whiskey in hand, sprawled on the couch which might soon be shared with a Ukrainian if the need arises. 

With the crime that is war continuing to be waged by the Russians on Ukraine, the search for context and understanding invariably leads us into a hall of mirrors and a bottomless pit of competing perspectives. When we emerge we are never quite sure which end is up, but cognizant that every journey of intellectual exploration involves confusion. 

Winter On Fire is a documentary tracing Ukraine’s Maidan Square Uprising in 2013-14. Produced by Netflix, it was the channel’s first Oscar nomination. A seriously tough piece of viewing, inducing expletive saturated outbursts from the safety of the couch.

The uprising was a mass response to the corrupt president of the country, Viktor Yanukovych, having reneged on a much-anticipated association agreement with the European Union. Instead the man described by Lev Golinkin during a podcast as a scumbag but a democratically elected scumbag opted to cozy up to Russia and accept a bailout from Russian financial institutions, some of which he was certain to fill his coffers with. 

While Golinkin is correct to note that the election that installed the corrupt politician was widely accepted as procedurally fair and democratic, it did little to curb his own authoritarian instinct. Not long after assuming office "Yanukovych’s rule was again marred by widespread corruption, authoritarianism . . ."

The Maidan Square protest lasted for 93 days and brought millions onto the streets. In a vicious bid to crush it the state security forces at first clubbed, gassed and brutalised the demonstrators. Watching the Berkut police savagely baton and kick the protestors prompted flashbacks to the baton-wielding thugs of the RUC attacking defenceless demonstrators across many squares in the North. The violence worsened in the freezing month of January. With the protest approaching the one hundred day mark the police eventually resorted to massacre. It was Bloody Sunday / Ballymurphy writ large, But not all of those who died lost their lives to the government and its Berkut thugs. A dangerous element had infiltrated its way to the heart of the protest, something which goes strangely undocumented in the documentary. Yanukovych quickly fell. Taking what loot he could get his greasy hands on he fled to a safe haven in Russia.
 
Winter On Fire is at the coal face, up front and personal. It allows a wide array of voices to speak from across the social spectrum of Ukrainians society: priests, singers, poets, artists, students, lawyers, architects, actresses, housewives and teens. This was undeniably a popular uprising which began peacefully. It is moving and shocking: a corrupt and vicious regime exhibited its willingness to inflict terror so that it might continue with its fleecing.

Yet, how the far right and its Nazis went AWOL from the narrative was not explained.

In fact were it not for the odd glimpse of Nazi insignia the viewer might be lulled into thinking that the former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul was on the money in claiming this year that “there are no Nazis in Ukraine,". But that would be as truthful as claiming there are no paedophile priests.

The documentary has been described as a CIA backed propaganda piece. How true that is I do not know but there would seem no reason for the CIA not to have enthused over it. The friend who recommended it to me made the point that it was “well put together as a propaganda piece.”

The argument for it being propaganda lies in the following from the New Yorker:

the ultra-nationalist group Right Sector played a crucial role, providing muscle to protesters who were largely unequipped to do their own fighting. The Right Sector had been viewed with some distaste in cosmopolitan Kiev. Now its members found themselves tolerated, even respected, by other protesters in the square.


Yet for some reason the guard dog did not bark to warn the viewer of that, leaving us unprepared for the horrifying vista that:


far from "denazifying" Ukraine, the Russian invasion is likely to further empower Ukrainian and international neo-Nazis, as it attracts fighters from around the world and provides them with weapons, military training and the combat experience that many of them are hungry for.

⏩ Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.
 

Winter On Fire

Anthony McIntyre ✒ A friend highly recommended that I see this. His take on it: “well worth the watching” and “powerful.” 


On both counts I agree with him. Not long after his message coming through last night, I sat down whiskey in hand, sprawled on the couch which might soon be shared with a Ukrainian if the need arises. 

With the crime that is war continuing to be waged by the Russians on Ukraine, the search for context and understanding invariably leads us into a hall of mirrors and a bottomless pit of competing perspectives. When we emerge we are never quite sure which end is up, but cognizant that every journey of intellectual exploration involves confusion. 

Winter On Fire is a documentary tracing Ukraine’s Maidan Square Uprising in 2013-14. Produced by Netflix, it was the channel’s first Oscar nomination. A seriously tough piece of viewing, inducing expletive saturated outbursts from the safety of the couch.

The uprising was a mass response to the corrupt president of the country, Viktor Yanukovych, having reneged on a much-anticipated association agreement with the European Union. Instead the man described by Lev Golinkin during a podcast as a scumbag but a democratically elected scumbag opted to cozy up to Russia and accept a bailout from Russian financial institutions, some of which he was certain to fill his coffers with. 

While Golinkin is correct to note that the election that installed the corrupt politician was widely accepted as procedurally fair and democratic, it did little to curb his own authoritarian instinct. Not long after assuming office "Yanukovych’s rule was again marred by widespread corruption, authoritarianism . . ."

The Maidan Square protest lasted for 93 days and brought millions onto the streets. In a vicious bid to crush it the state security forces at first clubbed, gassed and brutalised the demonstrators. Watching the Berkut police savagely baton and kick the protestors prompted flashbacks to the baton-wielding thugs of the RUC attacking defenceless demonstrators across many squares in the North. The violence worsened in the freezing month of January. With the protest approaching the one hundred day mark the police eventually resorted to massacre. It was Bloody Sunday / Ballymurphy writ large, But not all of those who died lost their lives to the government and its Berkut thugs. A dangerous element had infiltrated its way to the heart of the protest, something which goes strangely undocumented in the documentary. Yanukovych quickly fell. Taking what loot he could get his greasy hands on he fled to a safe haven in Russia.
 
Winter On Fire is at the coal face, up front and personal. It allows a wide array of voices to speak from across the social spectrum of Ukrainians society: priests, singers, poets, artists, students, lawyers, architects, actresses, housewives and teens. This was undeniably a popular uprising which began peacefully. It is moving and shocking: a corrupt and vicious regime exhibited its willingness to inflict terror so that it might continue with its fleecing.

Yet, how the far right and its Nazis went AWOL from the narrative was not explained.

In fact were it not for the odd glimpse of Nazi insignia the viewer might be lulled into thinking that the former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul was on the money in claiming this year that “there are no Nazis in Ukraine,". But that would be as truthful as claiming there are no paedophile priests.

The documentary has been described as a CIA backed propaganda piece. How true that is I do not know but there would seem no reason for the CIA not to have enthused over it. The friend who recommended it to me made the point that it was “well put together as a propaganda piece.”

The argument for it being propaganda lies in the following from the New Yorker:

the ultra-nationalist group Right Sector played a crucial role, providing muscle to protesters who were largely unequipped to do their own fighting. The Right Sector had been viewed with some distaste in cosmopolitan Kiev. Now its members found themselves tolerated, even respected, by other protesters in the square.


Yet for some reason the guard dog did not bark to warn the viewer of that, leaving us unprepared for the horrifying vista that:


far from "denazifying" Ukraine, the Russian invasion is likely to further empower Ukrainian and international neo-Nazis, as it attracts fighters from around the world and provides them with weapons, military training and the combat experience that many of them are hungry for.

⏩ Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.
 

14 comments:

  1. This is an amazing propaganda piece,something Gorbels ,Adams B,liar etc ,would have loved to own ,you have to pinch yourself to not feel totally at one with the people in Maidin square,it brought back memories of this place 69 and onwards,the brutality of Yanukovych,s BERKUT reminiscent of the RUC and backed by thugs like the B specials here,we must remember that the overwhelming members of that parliament voted to back Yanukovychs crackdown ,had l found myself there l would have picked up a petrol bomb also, and as here when hindsight kicks in and we witness what Zelensky,s regime has been at in Donetsk and Lugansk, and the banning of the Russian language not to mention the activities of the neo nazis Azov battalion and C14 , then and like our situation those who stood up to and against Tyranny were sold out , its Animal farm fucking all over , when those outside looking through the window from man to pig and pig to man and they couldnt tell the difference , my heart goes out to the innoncent and the kids , they are only pawns in a game of power ,great review Anthony,

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  2. Thanks Marty. There is no doubt - it is well worth the watching. Everything that we saw did happen. The brutality and the murders. None of that was made up. My concern was that the far right were scripted out of the narrative. Had I sat down cold without the little background knowledge that I do have, I would never have thought the Nazis were involved.

    That said, my side is picked. Russia is wholly wrong and I support the Ukrainians without hesitation or equivocation.

    But it is not a sport, something to be watched from the couch. Support has to mean more than roaring the Ukrainians on. I feel the need to help out in whatever small way I can.

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    Replies
    1. You are right, Anthony. The presence of the neo-nazi far right, even if marginal, amongst the Ukrainian resistance is not soemthing those of who support that resistance can be comfortable with.

      Delete
    2. Barry, I think they were more than marginal. As I read it, at the start, yes, but as the state used violence and they were prepared to fight they grew more popular and it has been argued with logic that Yanukovych's regime may not have fallen were it not for their input.

      Could we really root for Nazis shooting Russian troops? At the same time on what ground can we stand to condemn them if part of a wider resistance to Russian aggression? How applicable is the Bulgarian proverb? You are permitted, in time of great danger, to walk with the devil until you have crossed the bridge.

      This is the type of moral dilemma that is thrown up by conflict. There are no easy answers, maybe no right ones either: just less wrong ones.

      Delete
  3. No doubt Anthony,Putin fell headlong into NATO,s trap,when he in all probability held the moral high ground,my heart bleeds for those innocent children, but the hypocrisy of the govts and their lackeys in the media filling our tv sceens and newspapers about big bad Putin ,yet no mention of the countless numbers of Palestinian children murdered by war criminal NIT and Yahoo,those remarks from Boris "anyone who sends Russians out to kill innocent people is a war criminal"as you rightly said have those bastards not heard of Ballymurphy Derry or all those murdered by rubber bullets and state agents ,all war crimes,heard today that St Patricks church in Belfast has draped the Ukrainian colours over a religious symbol , yet unless your a top tout like Mc Guinness you cant have the national flag on your coffin inside their church ,If it was wrong for Russia to try and expand its sphere of influence in Cuba in the 60,s then it surely follows that Nato.s expansionism into the old Soviet bloc is also wrong, the people of Palestine have had the jackboot of zionism stomping on them for decades and noone esp Nato gives a fuck, so maybe such behaviour served only to encourage Putin ,the people of the Ukraine like Palestine, Ireland need and deserve peace with justice I cant be selective ,

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    Replies
    1. Marty

      "when he in all probability held the moral high ground"

      The moral high ground that Putin occupied in Chechnya, Georgia, Aleppo and Salisbury for example? It was the failure of the Western world to heed the dangers of Putin and Britain's facilitation of the laundering of his and his cronies' blood money in Londonograd that gave Putin the green light to invade Ukraine.

      Pointing to Western hypocrisy over Palestine, Yemen, Ireland etc. in relation to condemnation of Putin's invasion of Ukraine is like saying that it was hypocritical to go to war with Hitler because of the British, French, Dutch, Belgian Empires. May make one feel morally purer but dodges the reality that just as with Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1939; a modern imperialist power has attacked a democratic and sovereign nation using the same false pretexts that Hitler did; a dictator that was appeased just like Hitler.

      Delete
  4. This was my reaction too. It was a brilliant piece of cinematic propaganda. I found it very convincing, but then looked for critical reviews and they woke me up. Shows that even well-informed, critical people can be fooled by the best propaganda. I did notice right away though that there was no mention at all of the Ukraine neo-Nazis. That's why I went to look at reviews to see what they would say about that, and then found other 'problems' as well with its veracity and reliability.

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  5. Barry if you go on a whataboutery trip you will end up with sore digits , Putin is the aggressor here no doubt about it , but as I merely and probably poorly tried to point out the west esp NATO are culpable in this disaster,they watched as America and its allies bombed the fuck out of Iraq ,Lybia etc ,you are correct to point out the hypocrisy of the Brits esp the conservative party who is subsidised by oligarchies to the extent of promoting them to the house of lords ,as for Salisbury didnt the Brits butcher 3 unarmed Irish people in Gibraltar, jean Mendez in London, the failure in the Ukraine imo is not due to appeasement ,but lack of common sense, Ukraine as a possible NATO member was seen as a threat to Russias security, just as Cuba armed with Russian missiles was in the 60, Russia backed of thankfully, NATO could have compromised with Russia and left the Ukraine as a buffer zone, asstated the west is in no position to lecture anyone about democracy considering the way and number of deaths they have left in the middle east , Putin is just the other side of the same fucking coin. ,

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    1. Marty

      "NATO could have compromised with Russia and left the Ukraine as a buffer zone".

      Ukrainian membership of NATO has never been on the agenda nor was Georgian membership another victim of Putin's aggression in 2008.

      Putin has made it clear that he seeks the reestablishment of the Soviet Union or shall we say Soviet Empire. The people of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania with their membership of Soviet occupation sleep easy in their beds every night due to their membership of NATO.

      Bottom line Marty is that democratic, sovereign and independent nations have the right to pursue their own foreign and defence policies without interference from bullying imperialist neighbours be they Russia, China or the USA.

      Delete
  6. You left out England Barry,or does Ireland like Palestine not count ,

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    Replies
    1. Marty

      Would have been the case 100, 200 years ago but there is now a modern, flourishing, democratic, secular and multiethnic Irish nation state on the island of Ireland. Northern Ireland remains part of the UK due to an international treaty signed in 1998 endorsed by the overwhelming majority of voters on the island in simultaneous referenda.

      Not the answer you wanted to hear but that is how it is. And since you mention England, the vote in the English part of the UK for Brexit proves that many there would gladly be shot of NI (and Scotland).

      Delete
  7. I,m sure we will know soon enough the truth behind Putins end game Barry ,I have already stated that he is the aggressor in this diaster for both the Ukrainian and Russian people,however if I was from Estonia,Latvia, or Lithuania I wouldnt put to much faith in NATO,or hope that America or the Brits would stand four square with you if push comes to shove, remember Afghanistan ,

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  8. Let's not forget Putin had no problems using a nerve agent on a NATO members soil, I'll not be surprised if he does similar in Kiev.

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  9. Barry "that many there would gladly be shot of Norn Iorn", well they certainly gave it a good go on the New Lodge ,Ballymurphy, Derry, and lots more innocent kids and civilians ,but yes you are indeed right with people like Vardkar and Flanagan in control ,we are indeed in a new dispensation ,siné

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