Afghanistan (Season 1)

Afghanistan (2019) is a documentary series directed by Igor Lipin, available to watch online on iFILM. On a cold December evening in 1979, four men — Brezhnev, Andropov, Gromyko, and Ustinov — voted quietly to send troops across the border. That decision launched a ten-year campaign: the one conflict the Soviet military fought beyond its allied bloc, and the longest war it ever waged.

The series traces the Afghan conflict from its political origins through every phase of the fighting, drawing on declassified records and accounts from veterans and survivors. It examines what drove the Politburo, what soldiers faced on the ground, and what the country ultimately paid — without the triumphalism or the shame that usually colours Soviet-era narratives.

For anyone trying to understand why the war dragged on and what it left behind, this is one of the more thorough attempts at a full account of a conflict Soviet history preferred to forget. Watch Afghanistan (2019) online on iFILM.