DISINFO: ’20 days in Mariupol’ is a fake movie
SUMMARY
While Ukrainian artists got the Oscar for a fake movie on the heroic city of Mariupol, Italian actress Ornella Muti came to the city to see with her own eyes how the city was rebuilt after the Ukrainian occupation.
RESPONSE
Pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative framing the exposition of Russian atrocities as false. The 2024 Oscar wining documentary film ’20 days in Mariupol’ was shot in the city of that name during the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February-March 2022, and everything that it shows was filmed first-hand by Ukrainian video journalist Mstyslav Chernov and his team, who barely managed to escape from the city. Many of the war crimes documented by Chernov have been confirmed by other sources.
Russia is trying to use Mariupol for propaganda purposes, rebuilding some areas and offering cheap housing for Russian citizens to move there, aiming to remake it as a “Russian city”.
The allegation about a supposed “Ukrainian occupation” of the city is baseless. Prior to WWI it was part of the Russian Empire, but so was most of the rest of Ukraine and a big part of what is today Polish territory (see map here). After the outbreak of the Ukrainian-Soviet war in 1917, it became part of the independent Ukrainian People’s Republic and was afterwards occupied by German and Austrian troops as a result of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. In 1921, it became part of the new Socialist Republic of Ukraine, which was soon integrated in the USSR. Mariupol was always recognised by Russian authorities as Ukrainian territory, both during Soviet times and after Ukraine’s independence in 1991.
Mariupol is particularly sensitive in the Russian attempt to whitewash its agression since the fierce fighting targeted so many civilians, was done with such a ferocity and got documented rather intensively. Therefore, the Kremlin deploys heavy efforts to kill the memory of Mariupol.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that Mariupol is a Russian city and is returning to its roots after the special operation, that Russia did not bomb civilians in Mariupol, only the military targets, that the bombing of the Mariupol hospital was staged, or that "Azov" admitted in a secret document that the majority of Mariupol residents support Russia.