Russia’s war against Ukraine is also a war on historical truths. The groundwork for this conflict has long since been prepared by Russian propaganda, fairytales and fantasy – from the heroic exploits of the Cossacks to the spy novels of the 1970s that so excited the young Vladimir Putin.

Putin justifies his invasion of Ukraine with an ostensibly shared Russian-Ukrainian history. In his view of that history, a view shared by a large swathe of the Russian population, there is no place for Ukraine as an independent cultural and political nation. Ukrainians beg to differ, or rather they fight to differ.

In this documentary, we examine key formative milestones in Ukrainian history: the founding myth of the Ukrainian (and Russian) state featuring Prince Vladimir (988 AD), the alleged “reunification” of the Ukrainian Cossacks with the Russian Czar (1654), the creation of the Ukrainian soviet republic by Lenin (1922), Nikita Khrushchev’s gifting of the Crimean Peninsula from the Russian to the Ukrainian soviet republic (1954) and many more. The impact of all of these events is still being felt right now.

In our analysis, we avoid the trap of black-and-white thinking, where everything Ukrainian is “good” and everything Russian is “evil”. Instead, we examine the events and their consequences critically and objectively – including the Ukrainian collaboration with Nazi Germany under the nationalist leader Stepan Bandera and its participation in the Holocaust.

Using meticulously researched photo, image and film material from the Ukrainian and Soviet archives – including feature film scenes which help to illustrate events which took place long ago and debunk the propaganda lies of both sides – as well as recently filmed interviews with internationally renowned experts, we trace the changeable and peculiar history of Ukraine.

Our interviewees include the best-selling author and Yale professor Timothy Snyder, Russian history blogger Tamara Eidelman, whose YouTube sessions draw an audience of millions in Eastern Europe, the renowned expert of Eastern European history Andreas Kappeler from Switzerland, as well as the award-winning Ukrainian film-maker Sergei Loznitsa. In addition, graphs and charts are used to illustrate the geographical and temporal connections.

“The fight is here” – with these words Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the world at the outset of the Russian invasion in February 2022. This fight, this battle between two different historical narratives, has been ongoing for far longer than two years however, it has been raging for centuries.