The former Kremlin PR man, while filming a documentary in March of this year, visited Krivoy Rog, Odessa and Kyiv. After a month in Ukraine, he regrets that he is a citizen of the Russian Federation.
He saw war, destruction and murder with his own eyes. He spent a whole month under shelling and bombing while filming a film about the war that Russia brought to Ukraine. He posted it on YouTube, immediately receiving a criminal case and accusations of “discrediting the army.”
Rostislav Murzagulov was a big man in Bashkiria and worked for the Kremlin. However, the war opened his eyes. Now he repents of his work for the authorities and regrets being a citizen of Russia.
Until recently, he was a member of high government offices in Russia – he was a vice-governor, a deputy and a member of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation, and was responsible for promoting major federal projects such as housing and communal services reform and the Olympics in Sochi. He was the president of a Russian Premier League football club and the owner of many assets.
However, allowing himself to criticize the actions of the Russian Federation in Crimea and Donbass before, with the outbreak of a full-scale war in 2022, he left all posts, business and left the country. He was included in the list of “foreign agents”, received a sentence for “discrediting the authorities” and headed “Open Media”, founded by M. Khodorkovsky.
Murzagulov filmed Ukraine as it was in March 2024. His film premiered on April 17. What he saw and how he was greeted in a warring country, you can see for yourself. To date, the film has 150,408 views. You can watch it in full or select the information that is most relevant to you:
00:00 Chapter 1. What did I forget there
07:22 Chapter 2. Ah, generator springs – a pearl by the sea!
17:11 Chapter 3. Is it possible to get ragged on Khreshchatyk for your tongue?
40:06 Chapter 4. People's War
01:01:39 Chapter 5. Who allowed them to joke about Mariupol and the Ukrainian language
01:11:34 Chapter 6. Ukraine and Russia: little differences (which are not little at all)
01:22:13 Chapter 7. What will lead to Kyiv, and is it easy to get to the middle of the Dnieper
01:28:43 Chapter 8. Bomb shelters are for weaklings (the city falls asleep and the mafia wakes up…)
01:42:13 Chapter 9. How this film could not have happened
01:50:33 Chapter 10. Why so many civilians die
02:02:35 Chapter 11. Why did you bomb Donbass for eight years?
02:15:17 Chapter 12: Epilogue.
Murzagulov says that the trip to Ukraine completely destroyed his stereotypes:
“What I saw here completely changed my previous ideas about Ukrainians and the war. If you think that you understand everything about this, living outside of Ukraine, you are mistaken… We, whether we like it or not, are affected by propaganda, Kremlinbots are acting on us, writing nasty things to us under the guise of Ukrainians. We are afraid to go there, thinking that they will beat us there, that everyone there is angry, cruel, nervous, and so on. But if you think that in a month in Ukraine I saw only evil, suffering and death – then you are again mistaken! They know how to be reasonable and calm. They maintain optimism and a sense of humor. They are incredibly united and this is why they are strong, like almost no one else on the planet.”
Murzagulov filmed everything that fell into the lens of his camera. This is an absolutely objective look at a country whose name is pronounced today more often than any other on Earth, but which remains Terra Incognita for everyone who has not been there. You can fix this for yourself – right now.
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