Kiev promises to answer Russia’s ‘Crimea’ documentary with a film directed by a 3-time Oscar-winner

The Ukrainian government has decided to answer Crimea: Path to the Motherland, a Russian documentary film released earlier this year about Moscow’s annexation of Crimea. Kiev promises it make its own movie, this time “about the truth,” saying it plans to attract an Oscar-winning director to head the project.

At a meeting of the Culture Ministry today, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said he hoped a film about what “really” happened in Crimea would be available before the end of the year. Yatsenyuk revealed that the Ukrainian government is in negotiations with a three-time Oscar-winning director. Ukraine’s film about the annexation of Crimea will be released in several different language, including Russian, Yatsenyuk promised.

The Russian film Crimea: Path to the Motherland first aired on national television on March 15, 2015, on the first anniversary of Crimea’s return to Russia. The film shows several scenes from major events in Crimea during late winter and early spring of 2014, and features a lengthy interview with President Vladimir Putin, who explains in great detail how and why he decided to end Ukraine’s sovereignty over Crimea.

In his comments in the film, Putin said he was prepared in 2014 to put Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert, though he stressed that he operated on the assumption that this would not be necessary. Also, in a statement that caught the attention of US officials, Putin openly acknowledged that active Russian military personnel intervened in Crimea, before the peninsula’s formal secessionist referendum. Until this point, Moscow had always denied the Russian military’s direct involvement in Crimea’s secession from Ukraine.

• On June 25, Crimea: Path to the Motherland was awarded a special prize for “the interpretation of modern history” at the 2015 TEFI, an annual ceremony by Russia’s television industry, presented by the Academy of Television.