The director of Donbass and In the Fog resigned from the European academy and got booted off his country’s awards body. He explains why we must listen to other voices in Russia and Ukraine as the third world war has already started.

... Does he think, as many fear, that Russia will invade other countries? “First of all,” says Loznitsa, “they have to conquer Ukraine – and the chances are that will be a long and difficult process. I think Russia will disintegrate before it actually manages to digest Ukraine. But if the most pessimistic predictions come true then of course, absolutely, there is no doubt Poland will be next, then Moldova and the Baltic states. After that, it will be Germany, which still doesn’t seem to get the danger of the situation, then France, et cetera.

“There is almost no limit. In 1953, Stalin had a plan to start the third world war and his ambition was to conquer the entirety of Europe. It would be appropriate to start some kind of anthropological research to analyse how this crazy idea about conquering the world gets into the heads of all those rulers in the Kremlin.” ...