RT and CCTV Premiere Joint WWII Documentary

Between May 20 and 22, 2026, timed to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s state visit to Beijing, RT and China Media Group’s CCTV jointly premiered a three-episode documentary titled The Last Strike (最後一擊), known in Russian as Последний удар, about the Soviet Union’s August 1945 Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation against Japan’s Kwantung Army in the closing days of World War II. According to CCTV, the documentary was produced to “promote a correct view of World War II history and safeguard international fairness and justice,” framing the operation as a case of Soviet-Chinese “coordinated combat” that helped end the war, and describing the Kwantung Army’s fortifications as an “Eastern Maginot Line” — a reference to France’s pre-war border defenses, which German forces bypassed in 1940, and which the term invokes here to characterize Japan’s defenses as elaborate but ultimately doomed to fail. RT described The Last Strike as the first documentary on the subject jointly produced and simultaneously broadcast by Russian and Chinese state media, drawing on interviews with nearly 20 witnesses, including a 106-year-old Soviet veteran, alongside researchers from Russia, China, and the United States. The first episode aired live on RT Documentary, RT’s documentary channel; the second and third aired May 21 and 22 on RT Documentary and CCTV-4, CCTV’s Chinese International Channel.