The 40 most popular russian war & politics TV shows, ranked. Click any show for ratings, reviews, trailers, and where to watch.


Ekaterina
2014 · RU
1745. The reigning Empress Elizabeth Petrovna is infertile. The only heir is her feeble-minded nephew Peter III. Elizabeth cannot allow Peter to ascend to the throne, so she decides to marry the tsarevich, wait for the birth of her son, and then take the boy and raise him as a real Russian emperor herself. Brides are coming to St. Petersburg. Among them is the lovely Fike - the young Princess Sofia Frederica from the impoverished branch of the Prussian kings.


Pozner
2008 · RU
Vladimir Pozner interviews politicians and people of culture, science and sport.


Empire is Under Attack
2000 · RU
In this TV-series the events of the beginning of the 20th century in Russia are highlighted. Revolutioners, terrorists, spies - and investigator Putilovskii and his team fight them as best they can.


Trotsky
2017 · RU
The life pages of a man who changed the world but paid back everything he had. Leon Trotsky is being interviewed in Mexico city of the year 1940 by Canadian journalist Frank Jackson. During eight days they have eight interview sessions revealing the true face of Comrade Trotsky.


The Road to Calvary
2017 · RU
Swept up in political unrest during World War I, two sisters in St. Petersburg cope with turbulent romances as Russian history is made around them.


The Penal Battalion
2004 · RU
Drama of the penalty parts of political prisoners, who fought on the Soviet fronts.


Admiral
2009 · RU
The story of admiral Aleksandr Kolchak who remained faithful to his oath to the Russian Emperor and fought against the Bolshevik rule after the 1917 October Revolution.


The White Guard
2012 · RU
The White Guard is a Russian television series, based on the novel by Bulgakov, The White Guard.


The Attackers
2013 · RU
The Eastern Front, 1943. Two Soviet pilots, straight out of training, join a veteran fighter squadron on the front line.


Zorge
2019 · RU
No overview available


The Saboteur
2004 · RU
1942. Young men, graduates of a reconnaissance school, develop and carry out extremely complex operations behind enemy lines.


Under Military Law
2015 · RU
It is July 1941, and the Nazis are advancing towards Kyiv. A special squad is tasked with investigating major cases by acting both at the frontline and in the city itself, where rising criminals are joining German subversives in infiltrating the city, while a number of Soviet government representatives are happily profiting from other people’s misery.


Warsaw'21
2024 · RU
A well-known journalist is assassinated during the presidential campaign in Poland. The media pushes the narrative of Russian interference in the country's internal affairs, in order to support Silesian separatists and destabilize the situation. From a small spark, a geopolitical conflagration is ignited, capable of causing enormous damage.


Офицеры
2006 · RU
No overview available


Berlin Heat
2025 · RU
In the summer of 1943, the Soviet leadership became aware of the achievements of German physicists in creating the atomic bomb. The task of obtaining secret information about the creation of a new type of weapon that can change the course of the war is given to a Soviet agent acting undercover, Frans Hartmann. A complex multi-way operation begins. Hartman involves the chief of German intelligence, Walter Schellenberg, in whose field of vision is the German scientific genius Werner Heisenberg. The Gestapo also steps in and assigns an "employee of the German Foreign Ministry" Dori to Hartman. At the same time, in Moscow, under the leadership of the talented physicist Igor Kurchatov, work on the Soviet atomic project was intensifying.


Sleepers
2017 · RU
Sleepers (sleeper agents) are agents deeply incorporated into the structure of opposing forces. They are recruited before they get access to classified information, sometimes even before they start working in the field that interests the recruiting party. They are often recruited "to grow up". The action takes place in Moscow in June 2013 on the eve of major geopolitical events and upheavals that, as a result, will change the future life of the world.


Military Intelligence. The First Blow
2012 · RU
During World War II the Red Army sends a special unit named "Zvezda" ("The Star") on a mission to conduct Guerilla warfare against the Germans in the Soviet Union.


Militia Romance
2025 · RU
In the fall of 2014, a young Russian journalist Alexei Suvorov, who dreams of money and fame, travels to Donbass as part of a humanitarian mission to interview the famous battalion commander Lesentsov, who is fighting on the side of the militia. He intends to sell the collected material to a German publication, with which he cooperates in parallel and where he plans to get a permanent job. During the journey, Suvorov encounters numerous obstacles that always distance him from his intended goal. As a result, he is forced to act rashly, risk his life and make mistakes. His fellow travelers are people with different destinies and attitudes to what is happening.


Балтийское море
2026 · RU
No overview available


Liquidation
2007 · RU
Liquidation is a highly popular Russian television series, which parallels the famous The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed with notable ethical shift. In the "Meeting Place", chief of criminal investigations Gleb Zheglov had a modus operandi "Thief must go to prison, no matter how I put him there". In Liquidation, chief of criminal investigations David Gotsman's motto has changed to "Thief must go to prison, but lawfully so". The stars of the film include famous Russian actors such as Vladimir Mashkov and Konstantin Lavronenko. Sergei Makovetsky had to replace Andrey Krasko, who died of heart attack during the filming.


And Quiet Flows the Don
2015 · RU
The action begins in 1912. The heroes of the painting - neighbors, villagers, Cossacks from the Tatarsky farm of the village of Vyoshenskaya - have lived on this land for centuries, they are connected by kinship, friendship, love, common labor and military service. But this durable and self-sufficient world with its unique way of life, habits and a special system of views and values is collapsing under the onslaught of bloody turmoil and revolution. Don is divided by hatred. The seemingly immutable age-old foundations of Don life - land, farm, family, military duty - are dissolving in the crucible of fratricidal war. The Melekhov, Korshunov, and Astakhov families are involved in the cycle of military and political events.


Convoy PQ-17
2004 · RU
On June 27, 1942, a caravan of ships, codenamed PQ-17, left Reykjavik for Arkhangelsk. The route of the ships with cargo for Russia lay across the North Atlantic, where they were awaited by chilling winds, stormy seas and deadly attacks by German submarines and bombers.


Battalion
2016 · RU
No overview available


Последний бронепоезд
2006 · RU
No overview available


Death to Spies
2019 · RU
1941. Georgy Volkov, Captain of the State Security Service, is delivering to the Soviet Union a consignment of emeralds under a trade agreement between the USSR and Germany.


Kalbimin Sultani
2018 · TR
Mahmud brings Anna to his palace to teach his children French. The Russian ambassador also sends him there with the pressure to 'spy on his country'.


The Saboteur 2: The End of the War
2007 · RU
No overview available


Return It At Any Cost
2024 · RU
A girl comes from Uzbekistan to Volgograd to enter medical school. Due to her inexperience, she hastily arranges an internship in Afghanistan and goes there to a military unit.


Богатство
2004 · RU
No overview available


Bomb
2020 · RU
The brilliant scientist Mikhail Rubin ends up in the camp because of a personal conflict with the People's Commissar Beria. But suddenly Rubin is released: his best friend and colleague Kirill Muromtsev recommended Mikhail to a secret project to create a Soviet atomic bomb, and the physicist's candidacy was approved by academician Kurchatov. Mikhail returns to Moscow and finds out that while he was in the camp, his fiancee Anna Galeeva managed to become Kirill's wife. To fulfill the task of the state, young scientists will have to work together, despite the personal drama.


Отряд 731
2026 · RU
No overview available


The Optimists
2017 · RU
The early 1960s. The Soviet Union is experiencing a bright Khrushchev-era, full of hope. A group of young diplomats at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs come face to face with world-changing global events. Before long, these wide-eyed idealists find themselves deep in the breathtaking world of spy games, mortal dangers, and brilliant political maneuvering.


Spies
2013 · RU
No overview available


On the Trail of the Beast
2025 · RU
The Great Patriotic War. Soviet intelligence officers led by Sergei Skorin and Andrei Losev are trying to track down a well-trained sabotage group that is staging large-scale sabotage in the rear of the Red Army on the eve of the Battle of Kursk. Andrey and Sergey are brothers, but there has been a conflict between them for many years. Andrey does not trust Sergei, because he suspects that his brother has been turned upside down.


Chronicles of the Russian Revolution
2025 · RU
The history of the tragic events of the October Revolution. The period from 1905 to 1924 was a difficult epoch that influenced the fate of people not only in Russia, but also the whole world in the XX century.


Ash
2013 · RU
1938, Soviet Russia. There were two of them, both strong and courageous. But one fateful day, Igor Petrov, the commander of a Red Army unit, is compelled to exchange ID papers with a satecracker known as Ash. The incident leads both men to start their lives completely anew. For the following ten years, Petrov and Ash will live their lives in the fear of discovery. They will commit acts of bravery and insidious crimes in the name of the other so that the thiet becomes a hero, while the commander turns into a violent outlaw. The only thing they have in common is a tragic, painful love for the same woman. For ten years they will each encounter death and destruction before fate brings them together once more. There will be two of them again - strong and courageous, ready to fight for their love.. with the knowledge that retribution awaits them.


Burnt by the Sun 2
2011 · RU
Former commander Kotov, unjustly convicted in the 30s as an enemy of the people, miraculously survived and was sent to war by an ordinary ordinary soldier of the penal battalion. He fought like everyone else: in mud, cold and hunger, without looking into the future for more than one day, and even that he had to be able to live. To live and survive in the hell that was the military front line. His faith saved him. Faith in his country, faith in God and the faith of his daughter Nadia that the father is alive…


Quiet Flows the Don
2006 · RU
Against the backdrop of World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution, a young Cossack warrior navigates love, loyalty, and survival as his world transforms during the civil war that tears his homeland apart.


Special Squad
2002 · RU
Spetsnaz is a 2002 Russian TV miniseries directed by Andrei Malyukov.


Life and Fate
2012 · RU
The plot takes place in 1942-1943, during the defense of Stalingrad. The Jew Viktor Strum is a talented nuclear physicist working in one of the country's institutes on the creation of an atomic bomb. At this time, Strum's relatives die in Nazi camps and NKVD dungeons, and persecution begins against him. The inventor can only be saved by his scientific brainchild, which Stalin himself became interested in. The state needs such a powerful weapon as an atomic bomb. The scientist has to make a choice: to remain faithful to science and work for the "leader of the nation" or to abandon his vocation and be destroyed.
Russian television leans heavily on historical epic and crime serial, often working at a scale and production length uncommon elsewhere.
War and political series use serial length to show process: campaigns, negotiations, and institutions grinding forward. The genre works best when it's interested in systems rather than just speeches.