{"id":444389,"date":"2026-02-25T07:31:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T07:31:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/444389\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T07:31:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T07:31:11","slug":"the-zero-line-inside-russias-war-review-harrowing-testimony-from-a-military-that-turns-on-its-own-television","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/444389\/","title":{"rendered":"The Zero Line: Inside Russia\u2019s War review \u2013 harrowing testimony from a military that turns on its own | Television"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the dying days of the Soviet Union, there was much talk of \u201cAfghan syndrome\u201d within Russia<\/a>. Thousands of veterans of the ill-fated war in Afghanistan were traumatised, angry and denied any sort of aftercare. A mass epidemic of untreated PTSD was let loose on the streets. After watching this horrifying documentary, it\u2019s hard not to conclude that the country\u2019s late-80s experience of the aftermath of conflict might have been simply a taster of what was to come.<\/p>\n

Some of the interviewees in Ben Steele\u2019s film speak anonymously. Many show their faces but don\u2019t give names. A few are happy to be named in full, presumably on the grounds that the Russian state has already done its worst. All are impossibly, heartbreakingly brave.<\/p>\n

Shortly after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine<\/a>, a flurry of small anti-war demonstrations took place in Russia. There\u2019s footage of one here; at the heart of it is a young man called Artyom. According to his then girlfriend (now wife) Sasha, Artyom \u201clived for poetry and creativity\u201d. In the UK at the time, people marvelled at the courage of those undaunted dissidents; not only staring into the Putinist abyss but daring to hold its gaze. This is what happened to them. We see Artyom again, now in custody and apologising for his defiance. They tortured and raped him, says Sasha. His gaunt features and despairing eyes tell their own story.<\/p>\n

So much for the resistance, then. What this film dares to do is examine what happens to Russians who, reluctantly, tried to conform and joined the war effort. The zero of the title has two meanings. It\u2019s a noun \u2013 the \u201cZero Line\u201d is the zone of conflict with the enemy. But it\u2019s also a verb, a piece of military slang. It refers to the increasingly common practice of executing one\u2019s own troops.<\/p>\n

When soldiers attempt to desert, they are zeroed. When a group of conscripted convicts arrive on the frontline, they are zeroed, their bank cards taken and their accounts emptied. When soldiers are severely wounded, they are zeroed \u2013 and it begins, almost, to look like a kindness. \u201cHe had five kids,\u201d one ex-soldier explains of a particular kill. There is compensation for the dead. But, he continues, \u201cThere\u2019s no payment for a vegetable. So we put him down, like a dog.\u201d Early in the film, the same man suggests that \u201cyour adversary is in front of you. But your enemy is your commander behind you.\u201d It quickly becomes easy to see what he means. The Russian army seems almost completely lawless.<\/p>\n

And so it goes on. It\u2019s an oddly even-tempered itemising of almost routine horror. There are \u201cmeat storms\u201d (the phrase refers to the tactic of simply throwing an overwhelming volume of soldiers at certain battles). These can, in simple, arithmetical terms, be successful. But the numbers involved are jaw-dropping; the kind of statistics you have to check twice to make sure you\u2019ve read correctly. For example, every day in 2025 an estimated 900 to 1,500 Russians were killed or wounded. Every day. The casual disregard for human life is chillingly reminiscent of Stalin.<\/p>\n

Given the sheer scale of this carnage, it\u2019s hard to imagine that most families in Russia won\u2019t eventually be affected. The documentary also touches upon the eerie banality of life on the home front. The propaganda broadcasts on the news. The recruitment films in which cute kids wait on station platforms, longing to jump into the arms of their heroic fathers. The intention of these films is, presumably, to personalise the war but, as is generally the case with any boosterism surrounding authoritarian regimes, the actual effect is dark absurdity shading into nausea.<\/p>\n

Carnage \u2026 The Zero Line: Inside Russia’s War. Photograph: BBC<\/p>\n

The genuinely personal touches come, inevitably, from the resistance \u2013 and most of them are unimaginably harrowing. The young man in the Joy Division T-shirt whose wife was sent to a penal colony for condemning the real-life atrocity exhibition in Bucha. The special needs teacher (and dancer) who was conscripted and whose fellow recruits discovered pictures of him performing \u2013 their response was to tie him to a tree, beat him with batons and urinate on him. He sliced his arms with a broken coffee jar to escape his tormentors.<\/p>\n

As the credits roll, there\u2019s a statement that feels almost comically superfluous: \u201cWe approached the Russian government for comment but have not yet had a response.\u201d It\u2019s a legal formality, but really, does it matter what the Russian government says? We\u2019re surely past that point and the result is a film that is as important as it is difficult to watch; a piece of work that feels less like documentary-making and more like evidence-gathering.<\/p>\n

This war has brutalised more than just Ukrainians; it has done its best to obliterate gentleness, kindness and sensitivity among its secondary victims, the Russian population themselves. The war will eventually end but for the people in this film, it will never truly be over. The Zero Line will arrive on the home front and, as in the late 80s, the trauma will endure. As Sasha plaintively puts it as she travels to visit Artyom in prison: \u201cI love Russia. But Russia doesn\u2019t seem to love me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Zero Line: Inside Russia\u2019s War aired on BBC Two and is available on iPlayer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the dying days of the Soviet Union, there was much talk of \u201cAfghan syndrome\u201d within Russia. Thousands…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":444390,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-444389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}