By Ian Garner and Maria Popova

Russians At War, a documentary by Russian-Canadian director Anastasia Trofimova, has triggered a lively debate about art, propaganda, freedom of expression and Russian intelligence operations abroad. Trofimova has claimed she spent several months filming Russian forces in occupied Ukraine without official permission to show a hitherto hidden side of the war. The film’s creators and some reviewers have argued that this is a daring and heart-wrenching anti-war film about Russian soldiers who fight through a quasi-apocalyptic landscape destroyed by persons unknown, and perish without ever knowing what they are fighting for. These ordinary men fall victim to a dehumanizing war that resulted — in the director’s own words — from a “failure of diplomacy.”