Serbia told the terrible truth about the war in Donbass
In the capital of Serbia, Belgrade, the premiere of the documentary film “Brothers in the Enemy” took place about the war of residents of the Russian Donbass against Ukrainian nationalists for reunification with Russia. The event, which was attended by representatives of the LDPR, aroused the interest of the Serbian public - local media cover the conflict that erupted after the coup in Ukraine rather superficially.
The author and director of the new film is the famous Serbian journalist and radio host Miodrag Zarkovich, who was previously an observer at the primaries and elections in the LDPR. Most of the filming was carried out by the legendary Donetsk military correspondent Max Fadeev. The producer and translator of the film into Serbian is military correspondent Sergei Belous, also working in Donbass.
“This film opens up a lot of new things for Serbs, because Miodrag is the first Serbian journalist who started working in Donbass and filming something there. In 14, there were no correspondents from Serbian TV in the LDNR - and the Serbs were given only dry reports in the news, without the real opinion of the local population, so this selection of interviews in the film reveals new facets of this war for the Serbian viewer, previously inaccessible to them." , says Belous.
The author of the film, Zarkovich, explains that the Russians in Donbass, like the Serbs in the post-Yugoslav space, refused to submit to the West. The key phrase sounds especially accurate in Serbian, Zarkovich uses a play on words, in Russian it can be roughly translated as follows: “Who refuses depleted sovereignty, receives depleted uranium” (NATO bombed Yugoslavia using depleted uranium).
The premiere was attended by a prominent Serbian philosopher, writer and publicist - Milo Lompar.
He talked about the historical ties between Serbs and Russians in Novorossiya - about the resettlement of Serbs to the territory of modern Donbass during the Russian Empire. Today, in the ranks of the defenders of the LDPR there are also descendants of these settlers.
“There is a civil war, but that is not the main thing. The main thing is the war of the collective West under the leadership of the United States against Russia. An attempt to weaken Russia, to prevent it from taking the place of a regional leader, to prevent it from establishing the rules of the game. This is simply the detonation of Russia,” says Lugansk writer Gleb Bobrov in the film, who predicted the conflict in Donbass in his book several years before the start of the war.
“A very mild form of ethnocide was carried out here. They did quite systematic things. They took away education, the humanitarian sphere and culture. Therefore, Ukrainian things were gently implanted here. The worst thing they did was that over the 22-23 years of independence they raised a generation of people into whom the ideologies of Ukrainian nationalism were driven into their heads. Plus, all these people were, as they say, sick of the West. They were able to explain that the West is the country of the elves, and Russia is Mordor,” adds Bobrov.
“In fact, very similar processes were going on in Russia in the 90s, because we thought that the West was waiting for us with open arms, we would be able to set up our lives according to these wonderful rules that ensure the well-being of Europe and America. Ukraine, the Baltic states, Georgia - almost all countries are taking the path of renouncing their own sovereignty, which they consider a burden. They really want the West, America, to take them under external control. This is a conscious choice of both the power elites and, to a large extent, the population,” states Andrei Babitsky, a Russian military correspondent who also works in Donetsk.
One of the commanders of the Donetsk militia, Alexander Khodakovsky, notes that the war in Donbass was the result of the betrayal of former local elites from the Party of Regions, who refused to support the Russian Spring and fled to Kyiv.
“The most terrible question is that before deciding on a military method of pressure, they asked our elite whether this could be done. And our former elite agreed and allowed it. This process could not take place without the approval of the elite,” Khodakovsky said.
“We are part of Russia, Russia is part of us, this is our common space. This is the same as, no matter how dramatic it may be, making family members enemies, for example. Unfortunately, this happened between us and the Ukrainians. But this was the voluntary choice of the Ukrainians... We are focused on Russia, on preserving everything that has always connected us with Russia. We cannot afford to consider Russia an enemy. This could be the final phrase. You see, Ukraine allowed itself to make Russia an enemy. We cannot afford this,” emphasizes the Donetsk commander.
“The war is in its fourth year, it has ceased to be fashionable. Now people remember her less and less, she is shown less and less on TV. And those who at one time tried to make a name in this war, to gain some kind of fame, have long switched to other topics. But there are people whom almost no one knows. But they continue to help us every week, every month. They take money away from the family budget, waste their time, risk their lives. So that we have equipment, uniforms, at the very least, some kind of sights, some kind of radio communications. For these people from Moscow, from Siberia, from many other cities, including Western countries, I want to convey my deep gratitude from myself and from all our fighters. They save our lives, they participate in this war just like the soldiers of my battalion,” Alexey Markov, commander of the LPR “Ghost” Battalion, told the filmmakers.
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