Nazi Propaganda at Sundance?
A new documentary starring a neo-Nazi unit in Ukraine’s military made its world premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The movie, 2000 Meters to Andriivka, is more or less a sequel to 20 Days in Mariupol, which won the 2024 Academy Award for Best Documentary.
Whereas the team of Associated Press journalists that made 20 Days glossed over the notorious Azov Regiment, which famously led the defense of Mariupol in 2022, the following year they embedded in the Azov movement’s (more openly neo-Nazi) 3rd Assault Brigade to make a documentary about Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive. Their new film apparently fails to acknowledge that this is a problematic group.
Mstyslav Chernov, the director of both projects, won numerous awards for his work in Mariupol, including a Pulitzer Prize. He joined the Associated Press in 2014, covering the war in eastern Ukraine. “The infamy appears only partly deserved,” Chernov dismissively wrote about the Azov Regiment in early 2015, when this National Guard unit still had a notorious neo-Nazi symbol, the Black Sun, in its emblem.
“From time to time, Azov fighters in Shyrokyne greeted one another with ironic Roman salutes and then grinned at their own humor. That kind of idle larking and the battalion’s flirtation with neo-Nazi symbolism is seized upon as confirmation of their critics’ worst fears.”
Almost ten years later, 2000 Meters follows a platoon, evidently the “Hydra Group,” in the 2nd Mechanized Battalion of the 3rd Assault Brigade, which is led by Azov veterans. The Hydra unit takes its name and symbol from Marvel Comics’ fictional Nazi terrorist organization. The battalion’s openly neo-Nazi commander is Denis Sokur, or “Var,” the leader of the Azov movement in the Sumy region of northeastern Ukraine. He has a Black Sun tattooed on his elbow, and a vertical wolfsangel (not the Azov kind) on his ribcage. The Sumy branch of the militant Azovite organization “Centuria” formed a local special forces unit and later a company in his battalion, led by neo-Nazi “Legionnaires” who put “1488” in their social media handles.
Chernov accompanied the Hydra platoon with an additional cameraman from the Associated Press, Alex Babenko. His name might sound familiar to some readers, because he came up before on this blog, when the Associated Press whitewashed the story of “Valkyrie” and “Berserk,” a pair of hardcore neo-Nazis from the 3rd Assault Brigade. More than once when making Instagram posts about Azov funerals, Babenko has used the hashtag “wbc,” apparently referring to the “White Boys Club” football hooligans. Last December, Babenko photographed a benefit concert for the 3rd Assault Brigade, which he described as “a unique moment” that “showed a new Ukrainian culture.”
Whereas Mariupol was the second-largest city in the Donetsk region, Andriivka was a tiny village. When the 3rd Assault Brigade finally took what remained of that place, one of its fighters planted an upside down Ukrainian flag on a bombed-out, one-story brick building.
20 Days in Mariupol, produced by Frontline PBS, provided the long-running documentary program its first Academy Award. Apparently they are going for gold again with a documentary that functions as a pro-Nazi propaganda film, which “captures small, poignant character sketches of the Ukrainian men putting their lives on the line to potentially win back one patch of land.” Frontline’s Michelle Mizner reprised her role as a producer and editor for 2000 Meters to Andriivka. The latter’s executive producers are Raney Aronson-Rath, the editor-in-chief of Frontline, and Derl McCrudden, a vice president of the Associated Press and head of global news production.
If and when this Frontline-AP production hits theaters, neo-Nazis from the 3rd Assault Brigade could have the red carpet rolled out for them, or at least another excuse to visit the United States and other countries. According to Darya Zorka, a translator for 20 Days and 2000 Meters, “Everyone from Azov battalion are heroes, no matter was russian propaganda wants you to believe.”
