Russian propaganda, funded by Canada
Russian propaganda, funded by Canada
Former RT employee Anastasia Trofimova embedded with Russian troops in eastern Ukraine, paid for by Canadian taxpayer dollars. She wants to debut her film tomorrow in Toronto.
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This Friday, a documentary film about Russian soldiers illegally occupying Ukraine will make its North American debut at the Toronto Film Festival.
The movie – titled 'Russians at War' – has been criticized by Ukrainians and pro-Ukrainian Canadians as overtly propagandistic, as it was made with the cooperation of the Russian military.
Filmmaker Anastasia Trofimova not only did the film with the blessing of Russian troops in Ukraine, but also with hundreds of thousands of Canadian taxpayer dollars.
“I was so shocked, I couldn't believe my eyes. The very first thing I did that morning was organize a protest event on Facebook, even though I had no experience with holding rallies,” Olya Glotka, a Ukrainian-born filmmaker based in Canada, told The Counteroffensive.
Olya moved to Canada in 2013, the final year of peace for Ukraine. There, she began her filmmaking career, working as a cinematographer on short films and music videos. Although Olya has been a Canadian citizen for many years, like many Canadians of Ukrainian descent, she is outraged by the events in her country.
This Friday, the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), one of the most prestigious film festivals in the world, will screen ‘Russians at War’, a film by Russian-born Canadian filmmaker Anastasia Trofimova. TIFF gives ‘Russians at War’ huge exposure: every year, the festival draws world-renowned stars and is attended by over 480,000 people.
The film claims to explore the Russian-Ukrainian war from the perspective of Russian soldiers who entered Ukraine to kill Ukrainians and occupy their territory. In Trofimova's portrayal, these Russian soldiers appear as ‘ordinary’ people, often unaware of the real reasons behind the war, fighting largely for monetary incentives or under coercion.
Despite its declared anti-war stance, the Ukrainian film community and officials regard ‘Russians at War’ as overtly propagandistic.
To add to the controversy, the film was funded by the Canadian government, a longstanding ally of Ukraine. The project received 340,000 Canadian dollars (over USD $250,000) from the Canadian Media Fund, which is overseen by the government's Department of Canadian Heritage. On top of that, Canadian film firms helped finance the project.
Canada is home to the world's largest Ukrainian diaspora, with over 1.3 million Ukrainians, making them the 11th largest ethnic group in the country. That makes it particularly galling for some that Canadian tax dollars — including those paid by ethnic Ukrainians — have been used to support what many perceive as propaganda that justifies Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the war crimes committed there.
The screening of the film has sparked immediate protests from Ukrainians. Ukrainian MPs have even appealed to the Canadian Parliament, urging them to cancel the screening at TIFF.
The deputies argue that the film “offers only brief glimpses of actual battles and fails to convey the scale of destruction caused by Russian troops in Ukraine. Moreover, the director neglects to mention Russia's 2014 invasion and annexation of Crimea and dismisses as 'impossible' the well-documented allegations of Russian war crimes.”
Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland condemned the screening of ‘Russian at War.’
“It’s not right for Canadian public money to be supporting the screening and production of a film like this,” she said.
Olya is attending TIFF this year as part of the film industry community, and is making her own pro-Ukrainian films. This year, she began working on a documentary about the destruction caused by the dam explosion in Nova Kakhovka, the town she left over a decade ago when she moved to Canada.
“Not only is my home now under occupation, but even after it is liberated, it will be a desert instead of the blooming gardens we once had,” Olya said.
Earlier this summer, she returned from filming in Ukraine, where she witnessed one of Russia's many war crimes firsthand. Now, she finds herself at a festival where a Russian director stubbornly ignores these atrocities.
On September 10, the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada, along with concerned Canadians, organized a protest near the TIFF venue. The protest coincided with a media and industry private screening of ‘Russians at War’.
Around 400 people gathered outside the theater, waving Ukrainian flags and holding protest signs, calling for the cancellation of what they labeled Russian propaganda.
Ukrainians protest against the premiere of ‘Russians at War’ directed by Anastasia Trofimova at the Toronto International Film Festival, 2024. Video provided to The Counteroffensive by @horoshek:
“It’s said that if a movie gets to the TIFF, the next step is the Oscars. We really hope not,” Anastasiia Trehub, a peaceful protester who fled the Russian war to Canada, told The Counteroffensive.
At the same time, protesters say, the problem goes deeper than the film's screening at a festival.
“The issue is that this film has already been funded. And even if it is not shown at TIFF, there will be other festivals. Then it can be released on streaming platforms. And people will be able to watch it in peace, whoever wants to,” said Roman Pavlov, a banker in Canada who participated in the protest.
The Canada Media Fund is the organization that provided the most funding for the film. It was established to support Canadian cinema and is funded by Canada's cable, satellite and IPTV distributors and government contributions. Under CRTC regulations, taxpayer-funded broadcasters must contribute 5% of their annual broadcast revenues to support Canadian programming. This money is eventually redistributed and the CMF can allocate funds to Canadian broadcasters to support new projects.
This is how Anastasia Trofimova's project Russians at War received the money.
“This project was funded through the broadcaster envelope program, where broadcasters independently choose projects to automatically unlock CMF funds. TVO was the broadcaster that used their CMF envelope allocation for this project,” Mathieu Chantelois, the representative of the Canada Media Fund, explained to The Counteroffensive.
Chantelois did not answer our question of how the film resonates with the main mission of the organization, to “serve as the spark that ignites the sharing of a truly Canadian culture”.
“Russians have committed hundreds of thousands of war crimes in Ukraine over the past two and a half years. It is simply unacceptable to use Canadian taxpayer dollars to tell the story of the very people who are killing my family and my friends,” Olya Glotka told The Counteroffensive.
TVO, itself a publicly funded TV network owned under the rule of the Ontario Ministry of Education, claimed that the film ‘Russians at War’ is anti-war despite the criticism. Therefore, the company plans to broadcast the film on its platforms in the coming months. It was allegedly “unauthorized by Russian officials and was made at great personal risk to the filmmaker, who was under constant threat of arrest and imprisonment for trying to tell an unofficial story”.
However, it is unlikely that Anastasia Trofimova spent more than seven months at the front without informing the Russian Ministry of Defense. It is known that Trofimova received permission to embed with a Russian army battalion in Eastern Ukraine.
Trofimova also has at least indirect ties to the Russian government. For more than six years, she worked for one of the divisions of Russia Today (RT Documentary), the main Russian propaganda broadcaster abroad.
After the start of Russia's full-scale war in Ukraine in 2022, the state-owned news network was sanctioned in the United States and Canada. At the same time, the RT Documentary channel, where Trofimova worked, was blocked on YouTube. Early this month, US intelligence agencies announced an investigation into attempts to interfere in the U.S. elections by a network of American bloggers created with the participation of RT.
TVO did not respond to The Counteroffensive's question about why the company considers ‘Russians at War’, produced by a former employee of the Kremlin-funded Russian media outlet, an example of “independent documentary journalism".
Other companies also became official partners of the film.
For example, Knowledge Network is a Canadian public broadcaster serving the province of British Columbia. And Ontario Creates is an agency of the provincial government.
Currently, it is impossible to establish the exact amount of money companies have allocated to finance films, as this is not specified in the reports. However, all are funded by local taxes, which were ultimately used to finance Anastasia Trofimova's film.
In addition, the film was financed by one of the best known funds for Canadian documentary filmmakers, the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Fund. They allocated $85,000 CAD (USD $62,000) to six Canadian documentary projects. Among them is ‘Russians at War’.
The official website does not list the full name of the author of the film. However, the description of the film included in the news about the grant is quite vague and does not correspond to the actual plot of the film.
The Counteroffensive approached the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Fund for comment, but has not received any response.
As of today, September 12, other public screenings in Toronto have not been canceled. In fact, tickets for the screenings are sold out, which shows the demand for the ‘Russian perspective’ on war in Canada.
“As a cultural institution, we stand for the right of artists and cultural workers to express fair political comment freely and oppose censorship,” TIFF stated yesterday.
But there has been some progress.
After the Ukrainian rally, TVO, which was planning to air the film on their channel, issued an official statement:
“TVO's Board of Directors has decided to respect the feedback we have received and TVO will no longer support or broadcast Russians at War. TVO will review the process by which this project was funded and our brand was leveraged.”
Olya is certain that the peaceful actions will not stop. Canadian citizens, and not just the Ukrainian diaspora, are demanding further investigation into how their money ended up in the hands of a former Russia Today employee. So similar events are planned for the rest of the week if the film is not canceled.
“I think the film community will give us a very warm welcome. And I think they will want to listen to us and be very skeptical about the presentation of the film and the message that is being conveyed in the film Russians at War,” Glotka added.
NEWS OF THE DAY:
Good morning from Kyiv, where three brave members of The Counteroffensive team woke up earlier this week at 3:30am to watch the Trump-Harris presidential debate.
UK LIFTS STRIKE RESTRICTIONS: The United Kingdom has privately conveyed that Ukraine may used its Storm Shadow missiles for strike into Russia, reports The Guardian:
“British government sources indicated that a decision had already been made to allow Ukraine to use Storm Shadow cruise missiles on targets inside Russia, although it is not expected to be publicly announced on Friday when Starmer meets Biden in Washington DC.”
WHERE IS THE U.S. ON THIS? While Congressional lawmakers – and President Biden himself – have hinted that the United States might also change its policy on long-range strikes, no announcement has yet been made.
“We have adjusted and adapted as needs have changed, as the battlefield has changed,” Secretary of State Anthony Blinken told reports, according to the NYT.
The White House is finalizing the plan, Politico reports. This past spring, Biden had limited Ukrainians to firing missiles no more than 60 miles into Russia.
RUSSIAN BEGINS KURSK COUNTEROFFENSIVE: Russia is seeking to push Ukraine out of the Russian territory it now occupies, CNBC reports. A senior Russian general said that Russian forces had taken back ten settlements. Ukraine has made no comment on this supposed development, although the Institute for the Study of War has confirmed that counterattacks have begun, warning that "the situation remains fluid."
RUSSIA SEVERS WATER TO KEY EASTERN UKRAINE TOWN: Russia cut power and water to the the town of Pokrovsk, Reuters reported, causing chaos in a key flashpoint of fighting in the Donbas. The governor of Donetsk renewed his calls for civilians to evacuate the town, and said that fixing the water filtration system would be impossible during ongoing fighting.
DOG OF WAR
Today’s dog of war is a dog that Mariana found sitting under the chair when she went to her friend’s birthday party.
Stay safe out there.
Best,
Tim and Mariana
I believe adamantly that the best way to counter misleading or untrue speech, or misinformation/disinformation if you will, is by providing a true, fact-based counternarrative rather than banning the misinformation. Perhaps providing a brief "fact check" prologue to the viewing of "Russians at War" during this festival (and others) would be better than banning it. A 10-minute short explaining where the film lies and where it ignores important truths would undercut it's usefulness as Russian propaganda.
That said, that the Canadian taxpayers funded a Russian propaganda film should be a major scandal. Given my ingrained libertarian instincts, it's easy for me to see that this is a major problem with government funding of art. The government is put in a position where it either has to act as a censor, or risk funding works that are antithetical to the values of the nation and many/most of its citizens. The obvious solution (though highly unpopular in the "arts community") is for the government to stay out of funding the arts unless paying for art to decorate public spaces where implementing "editorial control" is normal and warranted.
As a Canadian I’m embarrassed that the Canadian Media Fund used my taxes to help fund a documentary about Russian soldiers occupying Ukrainian territory. All sorts of odious parallels exist, for example, a documentary about Nazi soldiers fighting in France in 1940. There are many others. That TIFF would take on screening this film about soldiers from an overwhelmingly larger country invading a much smaller, innocent, sovereign country is disgusting.