Russia also began to prepare a version of "Chernobyl" to blame the CIA

HBO's original series "Chernobyl" received a warm response after it was broadcast, but the series was not warmly welcomed in Russia, or to be more precise, it was not welcome in the Kremlin.

The Hollywood Reporter reports that a Russian company is currently in post-production on a similar TV series that "implies that the United States was behind the disaster."

The TV series, produced by NTV, is a free-to-air collection of films owned by Gazprom Media, the media arm of gas giant Gazprom. The project was funded by the Ministry of Culture at a cost of 30 million rupees.

The main filming was completed in Belarus last year. Although the broadcast date has not yet been announced, it has entered post-production.

At present, only a brief plot synopsis has been released for the drama: "Follow the perspective of a group of Soviet KGB intelligence officers who are tasked with going to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant to track down the espionage activities of a US CIA agent."

The Hollywood Reporter reported that although Russian audiences believed that Chernobyl contained inaccurate details and failed to show the political situation at the end of Soviet rule, the ratings on Russian local evaluation websites such as IMDB and KinoPoisk were not low, with an average score of 9.1.

On the other hand, the mainstream political opinion in Russia generally has complaints about this American TV series. Columnist Anatoly Vasserman said in the Moscow Times: "Any movie about Russians made by Anglo-Saxons is bound to be inconsistent with the facts."

Alexei Muradov, the director of the Russian version of "Chernobyl," told The Moscow Times, "There is a speculation that the Americans infiltrated the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which many historians cannot deny. On the day of the explosion, enemy intelligence agents were present at the nuclear power plant."

However, the Los Angeles Times said that this speculation was untenable because "experts from the United Nations and the Institute of Nuclear Energy have concluded that the explosion may have been caused by a design flaw in the reactor and human error. In an official report in 1986, the Soviet authorities also agreed with this judgment."

I don’t know what the consequences of this film-making competition and quarrel will be. But what is certain now is that HBO’s “Chernobyl” is still very well made.