A BBC documentary chronicling the difficult and often stormy relationship since 2000 between Vladimir Putin's resurgent Russia and the west has provoked a furious backlash from Russian exiles in Britain, who have accused the programme-makers of bias towards the Russian leader.
The four-part BBC2 series, Putin, Russia and the West, which concludes next week, has attracted condemnation from dissidents who say it displays an unacceptable "pro-Putin bias", as well as a "lack of understanding of Russia's recent history".
The documentary's producer, Norma Percy, and the BBC roundly reject the claims. Percy denies that the series portrays Russia's prime minister in too favourable a light and says it is "truly objective" and "multi-sided".
"We didn't set out to make a pro- or anti-Putin film," she said, adding her brief was to focus on international affairs rather than Putin's murky domestic record.
Part three of the series is to be screened on Thursday. But in a scathing review of episode one, the renowned Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovskysaid the film came across as "unequivocally pro-Putin". Its narrative follows the Kremlin's version of history, and resembles "nothing less than a party political broadcast for Putin and his United Russia party", he alleged.
Bukovsky, who lives in Cambridge, made his hostile comments last week in a blog for the liberal Moscow radio station Echo Moskvy (Echo of Moscow). "The documentary makes no attempt to illuminate events critically. It turns out to be an utter apology for Putin and his regime," he said, adding: "Putin appears as a solid public figure, who keeps all his promises (to his western partners and to Russia's electorate) … If Putin had asked his propagandists to come up with a film they couldn't have done better."
Bukovsky spent 12 years incarcerated in Soviet prisons. He has been living in Britain since 1976. He was a friend of Alexander Litvinenko, murdered in 2006 with radioactive polonium. In 2007 Bukovsky tried unsuccessfully to stand in Russia's presidential election. Bukovsky said he was mystified why BBC licence payers' money was spent on the film, and called for a parliamentary inquiry.
Percy is a renowned documentary film-maker whose previous work includes The Death of Yugoslavia. She is known for her tenacious ability to cajole eminent figures to appear on screen, and has won numerous awards. Paul Mitchell directed Putin, Russia and the West, with Brian Lapping the executive producer.
The film includes interviews with more than 100 people in eight different countries, including the former US secretaries of state Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice and the former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder.
Among the Russians are Putin's defence secretary, Sergei Ivanov, and his press spokesman, Dmitry Peskov. Despite initially positive signals from the Kremlin, and months of negotiations, Putin refused to appear.
Mitchell said reaction from Twitter to the series so far had been overwhelmingly positive, with no complaints that it whitewashed Putin. "No one said 'what a fantastic guy'," he pointed out. He said he was saddened by Bukovsky's comments, describing him as "a saintly figure and a hero of the dissident movement for exposing the Soviet use of psychiatry".
Critics of the series, however, are incensed by an interview with Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair's former chief of staff. In it, Powell admits that a spy "rock" found in a Moscow park was used by British intelligence officers – a claim originally made by Putin in 2006, to the embarrassment of Downing Street.
Last month a pro-Kremlin journalist, Arkady Mamontov, used the Powell footage in a 30-minute programme shown on Russian state television. Mamontov claimed that Russians working for non-governmental organisations were agents of British intelligence – a smear, activists say, to discredit opposition groups. The rock was shown next to Big Ben, together with clips of "British spies".
Writing in Monday's Moscow Times, the columnist Victor Davidoff said the timing of the Powell revelation was "suspiciously good for Putin", following unprecedented protests against his rule and ahead of next month's presidential election.
Davidoff also says the BBC film has a pro-Putin bias. It omits several crucial episodes, he says, including the mysterious 1999 apartment bombings which paved Putin's rise.
More damaging, perhaps, is the link Davidoff draws between the Kremlin's highly paid US PR firm, Ketchum, and the film. The series consultant, Angus Roxburgh, worked for Ketchum between 2006-2009, advising Peskov on how to improve Russia's dire international image. In his book to accompany the series, The Strongman, Roxburgh writes that the Kremlin invariably ignored his advice.
Percy told the Guardian that her production team had hired Roxburgh "to get a foot in the door", and to persuade the notoriously suspicious Kremlin that the BBC series would be genuinely fair-minded.
He wasn't involved in the editing, she said, adding that the BBC had "treated the Russian government in exactly the same way as the American government".
Others, though, criticise the series for failing to feature Russia's opposition. Masha Karp, a former editor at the BBC Russian service,complained of "glaring gaps" in the overall narrative, with Putin's savage polices in Chechnya glossed over.
The series only delves into the "grave matter of Russian politics" with the story of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the billionaire oligarch jailed after defying Putin, she says. Karp continues: "The contrast between the high level of professionalism in the film-making and the lack of understanding of Russia's recent history is striking … There are dozens of … deviations from the historical truth, or rather slight distortions … Taken together these steadily add up to create an image of Putin that will by no means be unpleasant to him, and will be quite useful to those in the west who would like to justify their support for him."
Percy, however, insists her subject was Russia's international role during the Putin period, rather than the dynamics of Russia's often depressing internal politics. She rejects Karp's comparison that it's as if the BBC had made a series called Gaddafi, Libya and the West, interviewing only Gaddafi's cronies and loyal advisers. She said: "It's like making a programme about Gaddafi but before the Arab spring. When the Russian spring happens you talk to the Russian opposition. We show the state in action. We don't use phrases like 'mafia state'."
A BBC spokesperson said: "Putin, Russia and the West was made in complete accordance with the BBC's editorial guidelines. Based on three years' research in Russia, United States and Europe, it is under pinned by the highest journalistic standards."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/01/russian-exiles-bbc-putin-documentary
