What Begins With Z
“Z” means war, or westward, “zapad” maybe. The letter “Z” spray painted on the side of a Russian tank turret turning, ominously opens Frontline’s new war documentary, “20 Days in Mariupol.” Shells rip massive holes in a hospital, shells from a tank spray painted with the “Z” insignia.
When Russia’s 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade shot down Boeing Flight 17, Mstyslav Chernov reached the scene before most other journalists. That was nine years ago. The Associated Press dispatches that he made with Evgeniy Maloletka and Vasilisa Stepanenk, chronicled rising tensions in Ukraine, broadcast on international news stations like CNN, FOX and MSNBC. In a seminal work of journalism, streaming on PBS, Frontline editors cut together Chernov’s original AP news footage using their signature method of current affairs reporting. The result documents the Russian invasion of Ukraine with heart gripping clarity.
A shopkeeper chases looters out of her store, yelling at one who takes a soccer ball, “Why do you need that?”
Shells destroy a maternity ward, and women die along with their babies. A toddler bleeds to death in the back of an ambulance. A father sobs over his legless son, who was playing soccer when a shell hit.
“If I start talking I’m going to cry,” the camera captures a man burying black bags in a mass grave as he holds back tears. Among these bags are the bodies of children, and several pregnant mothers who died following the destruction of the maternity ward where they were going to give birth.
Riveting, “20 Days in Mariupol” begins at a point of crisis, and poses a hopeless question: “Who will win the information war?”
One newborn survives, bringing a glow of hope that lingers only briefly. Songs shared in bomb shelters juxtaposed to homes on fire, civilized scenery gets violently interrupted by catastrophe, over and over.
“The footage is often hard to watch,” said Michelle Mizner. She led the team that transcribed the 25 hours of video Chernov collected, translated it, and gave it “the Frontline treatment.” Sitting next to Chernov for a PBS hosted panel discussion about their new project, she said, “When we talked about what to keep and what not to keep, the way that events unfolded in real time was incredible.”
But the reactions of parents processing the gut crunching fact that their children have died, are more memorable than the blood and blurred gore of the hospital operating rooms. She said, “What you need in order to sit with those images is Mstyslav alongside you.”
Chernov’s narration hovers gravely over his videos of looting and of police trying to talk sense into terrified citizens. “War is like an x-ray. All the insides become visible. Good people get better, bad people, worse,” he narrates.
As fighting intensifies, as Russian tanks and jets destroy every semblance of order, as the inevitable take over of the city by ground troops begins, the loyalties of the people stuck in the crossfire waiver. In these moments, you realize with horror, the grim purpose of all this violence is to overwhelm all thoughts of resistance, to subsume the Ukrainian identity.
“Russia will make you say that everything you published was a lie,” Chernov narrates as images of carnage lace together.
The mood shifts viscerally over the course of this documentary from one of disbelief and anger, to one of grief and confusion. Who is bombing who?
Fearful people lash out at the Associated Press camera crew from a throng sheltered in a doorway, “You morons keep filming us while the Ukrainians are bombing us.”
As misfortunes rain down with arbitrary force, and life changing certainty, doctors assess the injuries. Barely two weeks into the invasion, hospitals begin to run out of antibiotics to control sepsis.
Images from the hospital are interspersed with several short interviews with people wandering the roadways in shock, and officials working to reduce the chaos.
Corridors of the city fill up with people who had lost homes. A woman sobs, “We’ve spent two weeks in hell. Who will return our children to us?”
“At that moment in time it was so important for someone to grab us and say, you keep working. I’ll help you. We all will help you. You just have to do your job,” Chernov said to the crowd assembled in the theater, eager with questions about where he would be going next, his motivations, and his mental health.
“There are things that you just can’t fix,” Chernov said. Families are shattered, scattered around the planet. “What you saw on the screen is not something exclusive.”
Russian troops took control of the port city, Mariupol in a battle that lasted 86 days in the spring of 2022. Chernov captured the first quarter of that fighting on video. His crew left the city on the 15th of March, the day before the bombing of the Mariupole Drama Theater. At least 500 people died in that strike.
“A lot of what happens to me is my choice,” said Chernov. “The people whose stories we were trying to tell, they didn’t want to choose that. That happened to them. It’s very hard to make sense of why this is happening.”
