A seriously impressive documentary film from the Ukraine Russian war focusing on a group of soliders. This reminded me a bit of the Ross Kemp in Afghanistan series using lots of body cam footage to show you the soliders perspective of tge fighting. It avoids interviews with generals and MPs and instead focuses squarely on the soliders. The beautiful forests provide a haunting backdrop to all the killing while soliders in WWI style bunkers launch drones to seek out and destroy their enemies. Feelings approaching hate seem to be all we really see towards the other side, only the Medic at the end seems open to the idea she can see the other side differently. Captured prisoners seem to reveal their motive in joining the invasion comes down to money. No mercy is shown during the fighting and it's very brutal and raw to watch. Of course no TV programme or film can ever show you the true feelings of adrenalin and fear from war but this is a very good production. One or two small objections I have are some of the use of music seemed to me unnecessary, also despite being told it was all filmed on body cams by soliders are the start it's clearly not, the cinematography is far too good in some of the sequences. It's not until the end credits you see actually most of the production team actually seem to have been British. At least though it doesn't have a narrator like Ross Kemp doing voiceover for it but does try to allow it to speak for itself.

Fundamentally, war is always dehumanising, a licence to do things normally beyond the pale. 'Ukraine: Enemy in the Woods' follows a group of Ukrainian soldiers as they "heroically" risk their lives to repell the Russian invaders. Their cause is just, their willingness to sacrifice admirable; but the daily business of being a soldier is a grim one, even if the killing is now done as often by drone as by machine gun. It's sometimes said that there is no such thing as an anti-war movie, but this documentary is so unvarnished that it's hard to love its protagonists, and easier perhaps to feel sympathy for the men they are trying to kill. If Putin had a conscience there'd be a lot weighing on it.