‘Special Operation’ Review: Kyiv-Based Filmmaker Oleksiy Radynski Pieces Together CCTV Footage to Document the Earliest Days of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

Kinotron Group

Today marks three years since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022. Since then, the entire globe has maintained a fickle fascination with the conflict, particularly in Western cultures, where coverage of the assault has cycled in and out of the media, dependent on other world events occurring (elections, natural disasters, economic crises, etc.). For his latest work, Spetsialna Operatsiia (Special Operation), Kyiv-based documentarian Oleksiy Radynski brings the criminal invasion of Ukraine back to the fore, documenting the earliest weeks of Russia’s conquering mission as they endeavored to occupy Ukraine’s Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, the site of the world’s largest nuclear catastrophe.

Entirely comprised of CCTV footage from Chornobyl security cameras, collected from archival materials of the Ukraine-based Suspilne PBC broadcasts taken between February and March 2022, Special Operation distinguishes itself from the often sensationalized media coverage of the Russo-Ukrainian through the reality of its images, the authentic nature of its surveillance footage to capture the verity of the Russian troop’s illegitimate mission to capture the capital of Kyiv, less than one hundred miles from the power plant.

Special Operation opens to CCTV footage dated Friday, February 25, 2022, picturing several Russian tanks proceeding down the road toward the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant. As the soldiers move in, they lower the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag in front of the plant and raise their own tricolored one. Russian troops attempted to tamper with or destroy many of the surveillance cameras located around the plant but were unsuccessful at dismantling all of them. Soldiers continue to pour into Chornobyl, which they originally planned to use as a base for only three days (their intended timeline for overthrowing Kyiv); ultimately, their stay is stretched to five weeks. Devoid of sophisticated audio recording, the surveillance footage primarily captures the soldiers as they make themselves comfortable in their new headquarters, bringing in trucks full of bread and taking showers in the plant’s facilities. Special Operation never captures the conversations or conferences of the soldiers, instead emphasizing the banality of the situation as the troops bumble in their new surroundings, standing around, never seemingly accomplishing anything in the temporarily overthrown space.

Kinotron Group

Through the mechanical pans and zooms of the surveillance cameras, the triviality of the Russian occupation of the power plant slowly unveils the sobering graveness of the situation at hand. Returning many times to an exterior camera focused on a window with blinds tightly shut (the office of a higher-up at Chornobyl?), the audience hears radio broadcasts that serve as the documentary’s only form of dialogue. Concerned Ukrainian accounts remark on the conditions at the power plant: “The workers have been stuck there since the invasion started. The neighboring houses have been hit by artillery.” These transmissions speak powerfully to the existential fears of the Ukrainian people in the area, both in the contemporary and in communication with past disasters. Since Chornobyl’s No. 4 reactor was destroyed in 1986, the power plant has required around-the-clock management to prevent further fiasco, with plans for full decommission still far off in 2065. Moments such as these in Special Operation confront not only the conflict at hand but the overall anxieties of a people whose world has been shaped by ecological catastrophe for almost the last forty years.

As Special Operation moves through its brisk 64-minute runtime, the clarity of its imagery gives way to layers of sound that further articulate the dire circumstances of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Surveillance cameras record the constant cacophony of military aircraft moving from East to West, and grainy night footage captures giant explosions on the near horizon. This coverage performs in juxtaposition with the perceived indecisiveness of the troops who have settled in the plant, creating a tension of urgency between what is happening inside the walls of Chornobyl and the surrounding area, which is being faced with increasing devastation at the hands of its Russian perpetrators.

Radynski’s frank and political approach to Special Operation never treads into didactic or emotionally manipulative territory. Through its minimal edits and use of security footage, the documentary can rely on the validity of the images captured at the Chornobyl Power Plant during the Russians’ five-week occupation, which builds with an increasingly haunting effect over its duration. The impact of this approach on the director’s behalf feels like a radical departure from the news and social media coverage that has followed the conflict over the past three years: a virtue-signaling hysteria incapable of genuinely capturing the war’s atrocities simply through headlines or grand statements from voices so far from the actual crisis.

After creating several shorts in recent years, including Chornobyl 22 and Where Russia Ends, Special Operation is an engrossing feature-length continuation of Radynski’s filmmaking fascinations with Russia’s history-spanning ambitions of imperialism over Ukraine and its people. Special Operation works with a stomach-churning profundity of imagery that strips away the outsider frenzy and perplexity of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian conflict, leaving behind only the horrors of the truth.

Kinotron Group

4/5

‘Special Operation’ had its world premiere in the Forum Expanded section at the 75th Berlinale on Sunday, February 16, eight days before the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.