Veteran documentary filmmaker Norma Percy’s phone contacts should impress. She seems to be able to convince just about any mover in the world to sit down and talk to her on camera. In fact, you wouldn’t be surprised if she was in her latest series. Putin vs. the WestVladimir Putin himself agreed to an interview.
No luck, of course, although Percy did manage to buy some Zoom time with Putin’s current enemy number one, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who will appear in a later episode.
The first episode showed how Putin played with the West in the last decade. It’s still amazing to remember that at the start of this series’ timeline in 2013, Kyiv’s brave warlord was still a comedian preparing to voice Paddington Bear for the Ukrainian version of the series. Paddington.
Instead, we heard from Zelenskiy’s predecessor as president, Petro Poroshenko, while other Ukrainian performers made the program remarkably straightforward by appearing in full military uniform.
Moscow did not remain without a voice, since the Kremlin’s point of view was shared by the current Russian ambassador to the UK, Andrey Kelin. But the hall was almost full of former Western leaders, including Frenchmen David Cameron and François Hollande, as well as former European Commission chief José Manuel Barroso, several European diplomats and members of the Obama administration.
That level of confidence doesn’t come overnight, and Percy’s extensive work has solidified her position as the leading documentary filmmaker in recent history.
The episode began in a seemingly non-dramatic way during the 2013 summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, where a trade deal between Ukraine and the European Union was expected to be announced. However, the then President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych was summoned to Moscow.
Instead, a terrified Yanukovych signed a deal with Russia. This infuriated the pro-European population of Ukraine, who quickly gathered in Kiev’s Maidan – the central square – with the aim of overthrowing Yanukovych (though not before his security forces opened fire on them) and provoked the events that eventually led to Putin’s invasion of Crimea.
Like any good history lesson, this series is important for tying together events that might seem disparate when presented as a news article, such as the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 by Russian separatists in 2018, or negotiations over sanctions on various G8 summits.
It was also interesting to hear opinions about Putin’s character from people who had direct contact with him. Barroso made some telling observations, noting Putin’s surprisingly thin skin. President Obama’s unwise remark that Russia is a “regional power” appears to have prompted him to move further in what he called “his backyard,” they say.
“It didn’t help,” Barroso said of Obama’s comment. “It breeds resentment, and for me, Putin is a creature of resentment.”
Putin is also an opportunist whose favorite tactic is to split the West. Unlike 2022, he managed to get around the most damaging sanctions since the 2014 invasion of Crimea. As former Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite put it: “Cheap Russian energy was so convenient and addictive that [European countries] could not surpass their pragmatic policy.”
For anyone who wants clarity on how we came to the current conflict Putin vs. the West will prove to be an irreplaceable consideration. For those who may still be unsure about active assistance to Ukraine, next week’s episode (about Russia’s brutal bombing of civilians in Syria) shows what happens when Putin is given free rein.