Boris Johnson: Into Ukraine’s Kill Zone (C5)
Rating: Five out of five stars
Boris Johnson’s fury is unfeigned. Surveying the wreckage of a train carriage in Ukraine, torn apart by a Russian flying bomb, he boils with disgust to learn that the attack deliberately targeted the wives and children of frontline Ukrainian soldiers.
‘This is complete terrorism,’ he says. ‘You wonder what on earth Putin, his generals, think they’re trying to achieve by attacking innocent civilians like this. Because they’re making themselves look like barbarians.’
The former prime minister and Daily Mail columnist was filming deep inside battle-scarred eastern Ukraine, with fellow Daily Mail journalists Richard Pendlebury and Jamie Wiseman, for a 90-minute documentary, Boris Johnson: Into Ukraine’s Kill Zone, made by the newly launched Daily Mail Originals production unit.
Screening tonight at 9pm on Channel 5, this was unlike any foray undertaken by Western politicians previously. War reporter Richard and veteran photographer Jamie have covered the war for more than four years, since the Russian invasion in February 2022.
Boris Johnson goes to the Ukrainian frontline in the new Channel 5 documentary made by the newly launched Daily Mail Originals production unit
Screened Friday night at 9pm on Channel 5, Boris Johnson : Into Ukraine ’s Kill Zone got five stars from Daily Mail’s TV critic Christopher Stevens
For much of that time they have been making the regular Frontline and Crossfire combat documentaries for the Daily Mail’s YouTube platform, which have been viewed more than 40million times around the world.
Their work is exceptionally dangerous. Just how constant the peril is for everyone who lives in the Kill Zone, the region immediately behind the 1,330-mile frontline, became frighteningly plain in the course of this film.
In Zaporizhia, a city on the banks of the Dnieper river and the focus of repeated Russian attacks, Boris lay awake listening to drones striking nearby buildings.
‘Just before four o’clock in the morning,’ he said, ‘I’m wakened by a loud rumbling noise. Then, 4.07, another big thud, and it turns out that there were two Shahed [Iranian drone] strikes. The truth is that if it had come through our window, we wouldn’t have known a thing about it.’
Stopping in a village called Komyshuvakha, where many of the farm buildings were little more than rubble, and gaping holes smouldered in the side of apartment blocks, he ducked into a supermarket that remained defiantly open.
There were moments when the 62-year-old ex-PM appeared, to borrow the sort of schoolboyish phrase he enjoys, to be bricking it
‘Trying to protect their loved ones with equipment designed more than 100 years ago,’ he marvelled. ‘They’re heroes, but it’s a disgrace that we’re not doing more to help them’
A persistent bleep-bleep followed him, like an agitated Geiger counter. An officer from a nearby battalion, acting as the Daily Mail team’s security officer, was scanning the skies for telltale signs of approaching drones.
Suddenly, the noise from the device intensified. A glide bomb was approaching. The order to evacuate the building sent Boris and the other journalists racing for their vehicle, before speeding out of the village.
There were moments when the 62-year-old ex-PM appeared, to borrow the sort of schoolboyish phrase he enjoys, to be bricking it. Jolting out of the capital Kyiv in the back of the Daily Mail’s ancient Land Cruiser, nicknamed Daisy, his eyes widened as Richard told him: ‘There’s a school of thought now that journalists shouldn’t be wearing blue helmets. They should be camouflaged – because Russians target journalists.’
‘Oh really?’ he replied, in a tone of voice that conveyed much more than the mere words.
But there’s a distractibility about Boris that makes him unable to remain serious for long. Even when he’s angry, shocked or emotionally moved, his attention is easily drawn to the novel or the frivolous.
In Zaporizhia, where the hotels come under frequent Russian attack to deter Western journalists from reporting on the war, he and his colleagues stayed in a privately rented apartment. All identifying details were blurred out to prevent Russian retaliation.
Richard and Jamie made the mistake of failing to hide their food. In the morning, they woke to discover a lump of cheese and two Snickers bars were gone.
‘They were left unattended,’ pleaded the former First Lord of the Treasury. He then issued a partial denial: ‘I didn’t eat your cheese.’
At an anti-aircraft artillery headquarters outside Kyiv, with a thick frost on the ground, he was fascinated to see the wreckage of a Shahed drone brought down by fire from a heavy machine-gun similar to those used against the Nazis in the Second World War.
‘You sure got it,’ he congratulated the gunners. ‘You shot the a*** off that one. I see why you defeated Napoleon, and everybody else.’
The middle-aged soldiers who man those guns night after night looked half-dead on their feet. But they beamed with pride like boys as they showed this British statesman, who has backed their cause from day one of the conflict, videos of their marksmanship, picking the flying bombs out of the air like murderous clay pigeons.
Outside, shivering because he’d ignored advice to wear thermal underwear (‘I should have put on those bloody long-johns’), Boris couldn’t resist clambering on to the back of a mobile anti-aircraft gun to inspect the weapon.
‘Trying to protect their loved ones with equipment designed more than 100 years ago,’ he marvelled. ‘They’re heroes, but it’s a disgrace that we’re not doing more to help them.’
This was the constant theme of his reflections, talking directly to the camera in an interview shot after the visit but inserted in segments between stages of his trip.
The Ukrainian resistance was so determined, in spite of the overwhelming firepower they face, that the West has started taking it for granted. ‘I think we’ve been lulled into a false sense of security by Ukrainian success,’ he said.
Boris was filming deep inside battle-scarred eastern Ukraine, with fellow Daily Mail journalists Richard Pendlebury, pictured, and Jamie Wiseman
War reporter Richard and veteran photographer Jamie, pictured, have covered the war for more than four years, since the Russian invasion in February 2022
News footage rarely shows the cost of that ‘success’ as does this film. Roads in the Kill Zone are all but deserted, and lined with a cat’s cradle of wires to impede drone attacks on the few vehicles that do use them.
Drivers keep the pedal to the floor, swerving around potholes at 90mph, to make it harder for Russian drone operators to keep them in their sights.
Fields that once formed part of the ‘breadbasket of Europe’ are now seeded with homemade plastic mines, including the miniature ‘toe-poppers’ – designed to maim combatants and force the enemy to devote more manpower to rescuing and treating injured soldiers. It’s an unspeakably grim conflict in every aspect.
Worn out by war, the Ukrainians will fight on because they know that if they surrender, their fate under Russia will be worse. One 24-year-old female volunteer named Dasha told Boris her father was so angry when she joined up, he refused to speak to her for months. A soldier himself, he was fighting to keep his family safe – and he couldn’t do that if Dasha insisted on going to the front.
Her selfless courage was so remarkable, it achieved the unthinkable, and left Boris lost for words.
The bitter truth is that Britain could no longer defend herself as Dasha and her compatriots are defending Ukraine. A YouGov poll this week revealed that only 6 per cent of Britons would volunteer to fight in the face of ‘imminent invasion’.
That makes it all the more imperative Russia is stopped. Ukraine is the bulwark holding back a potential war in Europe. Boris Johnson understands this, and possesses the orator’s turn of phrase to make others understand it, too.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a clear case of right and wrong, good and evil,’ he said. ‘I’m convinced that they’re going to win. We could help them win much faster if we gave them some things that they need.’
Lining up with the gunners at the ack-ack battery, he gave two thumbs up to the camera. ‘Slava Ukraini!’ he shouted. Victory to Ukraine!
