‘Putin and the West’ is very strong television, made possible by the VPRO

HIt must be due to the prudent tone and professional lightness that diplomats often have, that I noticed on Monday while watching the grandiose documentary Putin and the West I got the feeling that I was seeing a story with a happy ending. The same elation that you can feel during the reconstruction of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Or during a film about the release of Nelson Mandela in apartheid South Africa. A sense of justice.

During the two-part documentary about Putin and the West, a co-production of the BBC and a handful of European broadcasters including VPRO, my perceived optimistic tone, which I perceived against my better judgement, clashed with the bitter reality. Because although part two, Escalationended with some words of hope by the Secretary General of the United Nations António Guterres, there was little cheerfulness about the war in Ukraine to be gleaned from the words that a parade of diplomats and political leaders used in front of the camera of the American filmmaker Norma Percy .

At a time when US military support for Ukraine is stagnating – support that may end after a Republican election victory in November – and Putin has time on his side in the war of attrition, Percy has managed to get an impressive number of diplomatic key players to reflect on the war that started in February 2022.

Among them are Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, British ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson, his successor Rishi Sunak, the Russian Ambassador to the UN, the head of the CIA, Swedish ex-Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, UN boss Guterres, an influential Chinese . I forget to mention many.

The Belarusian ambassador to the UN often also spoke. It is true that his country is a paladin of Putin’s Russia – he expressed Russian propaganda slightly less crudely than his Russian colleague and with a somewhat (cynical) sense of reality. His prediction about the course of the war in Ukraine: ‘Defeat the Russians on the battlefield? Winning against a nuclear superpower? I wish them the best of luck.’

The way the documentary analyzes body language is rock solid. The discomfort of Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov during a strong (online) speech by Zelensky in the Security Council – the Russian fiddling with the cord of his earpiece. The panic in the eyes of French President Macron when he hears that a Russian missile may have hit Poland, resulting in deaths – his fear of escalation. TV viewers cannot possibly get any closer to the core of the diplomatic war, which is also part of the conflict.

It is superior television, made possible by the VPRO, which can boast a great tradition of foreign reporting. Watch this documentary and you will understand why Putin’s admirer Geert Wilders has no interest in public broadcasting.