Anna Artemyeva

Since February 2022, hundreds of thousands of Russians have passed through the front lines. They return home changed—shaped by experiences beyond imagination. They’ve seen shells tear their friends apart, dogs eat corpses. They’ve slept on dead bodies. And they’ve pulled the trigger themselves. How has this changed them? What do they think about the war? Can they find their place in peaceful life? We came to these men with questions that trouble us as well. Eighteen men speak about the terrifying events they took part in. About the choices they made. And how they now judge those choices. Their shared story as men is one of the greatest tragedies to have befallen our country in recent decades.

15 years ago, our colleague, journalist Anna Politkovskaya, was killed. Today, for the first time, we are telling the whole story of the investigation that we have been conducting all these years.

Siberia stands as Russia's most abundant macroregion in terms of natural resources, yet paradoxically, it grapples with significant disadvantages. Boasting 88% of the nation's natural gas reserves, only 16.8% of households have access to this vital resource—lower than anywhere else in the country. Historically, the state has extracted resources from local residents, and recently, this trend has escalated to include the relocation of residents themselves, sending them to Ukraine. As a compensation for fathers, husbands, and sons being sent to the front lines, their families receive firewood to endure the harsh winter of 2022-2023 without freezing. Correspondents from Novaya Gazeta traverse Siberia, engaging with ordinary residents, local officials, and the families of those mobilized, delving into their perspectives on poverty, the ongoing special operation, and the contentious necessity of sending their loved ones to the front lines.

By the beginning of the war in Chechnya, the legendary Major Izmailov worked in the military registration and enlistment office of the city of Zhukovsky. Having buried the first conscript who died during the storming of Grozny, he refused to send 18-year-old children to death and went to Chechnya himself to take out the prisoners. And he freed at least 174 people. The film uses a rare chronicle of the Chechen wars from the private archives of mothers who were looking for their sons in Chechnya, as well as negotiating officers from the working group on the exchange of prisoners. For the first time, the heroes of the film tell in detail what they had to go to to free people from captivity on both sides.