A man casually plunges a knife through a woman’s hand, pinning her to the table in a prelude to rape. Another attacker murders her baby. These atrocities belong to a war in Ukraine but not to the one playing out now.
Rather they are sadistic, horror-filled fantasies from President Vladimir Putin’s propaganda machine. Solntsepyok — which roughly translates as “sun-baked”, named after a multiple rocket launcher system —is a film depicting the fictional Ukrainian massacre of Russians in 2014 and the subsequent vengeance taken by a band of Russian mercenaries depicted as heroes.
Starring well-known actors, Solntsepyok premiered on Russian television in August, one of several propaganda films bankrolled by a billionaire known as “Putin’s chef”.
Yevgeny Prigozhin is a former convict who made his
