2000BABITSKY'S WAR

COMMENT

In December 2000 Andrei Babitsky, a Russian journalist working for the U.S. funded radio
station Radio Liberty, went missing in Chechnya. He had always been a very brave journalist
going right into the front line to report on the war and had developed very strong links with
the Chechen army. He spent a lot of time with them and thus formed a very different opinion
about what was going on in that war to the one expounded by the Russian government and Vladimir Putin. After some of the footage he shot was shown on Russian television he was captured by the Russian army and held captive in a so-called filtration camp in Northern Chechnya. The Russian army was capturing all the Chechen men and boys as they fled the war. Babitsky was part of a small group of journalists committed to telling the truth about what was happening in Grozny and Chechnya. The story is powerfully told by Babitsky through the footage he shot during the war. Paul Yule does a solid job of uncovering the unknown story of the war. He managed this again with House of War, a story about the battle at Mazar I Sherif during the Afghan Conflict.

Additional camera credits: Valentin Chernovol / Aleksandr Lomakin