Power players open up about their fraught dealings with the Russian president, but the main takeaway is this: being a world leader seems like one long stream of mic-drop disses and gossip
The first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine looms. How did we get here? Well timed to answer that is Putin vs the West (BBC Two), a three-part documentary that will consider Russia’s involvement in the Syrian civil war, before analysing the run-up to the sorry events of early 2022. Before all that, episode one takes us back to 2014, when Russian forces crept into and occupied the southern Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, to international outrage. Here is a tale of tense negotiations and uncertain diplomatic manoeuvres.
We begin in late 2013 – when Vladimir Putin pressed the Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, into pulling out of a trade deal with the EU – before revisiting the protests and politicking that brought down Yanukovych, as well as Putin’s military response to that slight. The roll call of contributors is impressive: prominent Russian and Ukrainian leaders appear alongside big beasts from the EU such as Jean-Claude Juncker and José Manuel Barroso. The impression we are given is that even at the highest international level – perhaps especially there – politics is an unpredictable, nebulous game of manners.
