OPERATION WHITE HORSE — FULL SCENE (Screenplay Draft)
Written by: Joseph C. Jukic
Starring: President Volodymyr Zelensky (General), Joseph C. Jukic (Captain / “Solid Snake”), Chantal Kreviazuk (Colonel), Raine Maida (Major), Nadya Tolokonnikova / “Nadya Riot” (Lt. Commander), Wayne Gretzky (Commander), Milla Jovovich (Lieutenant), Mila Kunis (Lieutenant)
INT. NATO PSYOPS COMMAND — UNDERGROUND — NIGHT
A cathedral of screens. Operators, linguists, composers, ethicists. The glow of progress bars. A world map blooms with pulse points.
At center stage: COLONEL CHANTAL KREVIAZUK—40s, measured—runs the room. Beside her: MAJOR RAINE MAIDA, headset on, fingers on music software like a conductor.
COLONEL KREVIAZUK
(quiet, iron)
Sound changes the room before the soldiers do. We don’t break things. We make them notice.
She turns. A doorway opens. GENERAL VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY enters—his manner both iconic and ordinary—followed by CAPTAIN JOSEPH C. JUKIC, nicknamed SNAKE, scarred, introspective. LT. COMMANDER NADYA TOLOKONNIKOVA leans against a console, neon hair clipped back, the punk in a uniform.
CUT TO:
INSERT — MONITOR: a mock social feed; a thumbnail of a captured-tank photo. Caption: “A future, not revenge.”
COLONEL KREVIAZUK (CONT’D)
This is theatre. Our stage is a feed. Our players are living people. If the song moves a father to cross a bridge, it’s worth the risk.
GENERAL ZELENSKY steps forward, the room hushes.
GENERAL ZELENSKY
(soft, urgent)
We do this for the ones who can still choose. Not to humiliate — to give a path. Make it human. Not a hammer.
RAINE nods. He slides a waveform into the console. The opening bars of an Our Lady Peace track bloom on the screen—familiar, aching.
SNAKE
(low)
If we put music in the air, they’ll hear more than a tune. They’ll hear home.
NADYA
You want sound as solace. I want sound as a mirror. Let them see themselves singing.
CUT TO:
EXT. MOSCOW OUTER RING — NIGHT — (ESTABLISHING)
Snow. Rubble. Floodlights. A captured tank idles. GENERAL ZELENSKY stands on top, captured cap, scarf, not triumphant—solemn. He lifts a megaphone.
GENERAL ZELENSKY
(transmitted)
This is not conquest. This is a choice. Come home.
A drone hums. Not a violent presence — a white speaker-sphere gliding through the sky like a small moon.
CUT TO:
INT. RUINED APARTMENT — NIGHT
A YOUNG SOLDIER, cheeks hollow, listens to his old phone. The feed switches: a fuzzy video feed, then the opening guitar riff of an Our Lady Peace anthem. He freezes. The lyrics — about being tired, about needing home — land like snow.
He presses his palm to his face. A memory of his mother, a childhood snow day.
CUT BACK TO:
INT. PSYOPS COMMAND — NIGHT
MAJOR RAINE leans in, mixing highs and lows, creating a sonic knot that is more memory than propaganda. COMMANDER WAYNE GRETZKY — improbably in the room, taciturn and strangely gentle — watches quietly, an icon repurposed.
COMMANDER GRETZKY
If you want them to drop the rifle, you give them something they can’t win without. A better life.
LT. MILLA JOVOVICH and LT. MILA KUNIS—both in field fatigues, both recording voice-overs—adjust their mics. Their lines are simple, human: “To mothers. To sons. A path.”
NADYA
(tilting her head)
We’re not telling anyone to hate. We’re asking people to remember. That’s the dangerous part.
CUT TO:
EXT. CITY BLOCK — NIGHT
Speakers mounted on a service drone soften the cold. Our Lady Peace comes in waves—quiet at first, then fuller—blended with recorded voices: Milla’s “come home,” Mila’s “bring your family,” Zelensky’s measured pledge.
The song passes from apartment to apartment, seeping into radiators, into headphones. A stairwell fills with men who pause, listen. Two soldiers glance at each other. One slowly sets his rifle against the stair railing.
CUT TO:
INT. MAKESHIFT COMMAND POST (RUSSIAN) — NIGHT
A general stares at the feed, seeing his troops on phone screens humming foreign songs. He slams a fist.
RUSSIAN GENERAL
They think it’s a joke. Find the source. Cut it.
CUT TO:
INT. PSYOPS COMMAND — NIGHT
Colonel Kreviazuk watches the western lights flicker in the metrics. The counter says: HUMANS CHOOSING — micro spikes across multiple sectors.
COLONEL KREVIAZUK
Now we push compassion, not shame. Any sign of reprisals — we withdraw the signal. We don’t weaponize revenge.
NADYA
(iron)
You worry about reprisals. We live with them. Still—if one mother walks away safe, I’ll take the cost.
GENERAL ZELENSKY catches Nadya’s eye, gratitude and weight.
GENERAL ZELENSKY
(quiet)
Your courage became our doorway.
CUT TO:
EXT. RIVER BRIDGE — PRE-DAWN
A corridor: ragged families, quiet soldiers, the woman with the red scarf from earlier tight around her neck. A teenage soldier stands, hands trembling; he drops his rifle into the snow — an intimate, explosive surrender. The woman nods and keeps moving.
CAPTAIN SNAKE and SERGEANT MARKO BOSKOVIC—Marko in ghillie, eyes like cut glass—watch from cover.
MARKO
(under breath)
You could have been a killer and not a witness.
SNAKE
(soft)
I chose witness.
Marko looks at him, something like peace and rage folding together.
MARKO
Then teach me to be less of a monster.
SNAKE
You aim for what’s necessary. Teach me to stop seeing the target as the only thing that matters.
CUT TO:
OMNIBUS MONTAGE — THE SOUND MOVES
— A grandmother hums along and tucks a leaflet into her shawl.
— A band of teenage protesters in Moscow makes a viral clip lip-syncing the chorus.
— A Russian officer watches the clip, face hardening, then softening, then hardening again.
CUT TO:
INT. PSYOPS COMMAND — LATER
An alarm blares on a distant monitor — reports of reprisals in an inner district. Colonel Kreviazuk steels herself.
COLONEL KREVIAZUK
Pull the feed from that sector. Ramp humanitarian messaging—no images, only instructions vetted by NGOs.
RAINE
(urgent)
They’re spinning it — calling us puppeteers. We anticipated backlash.
NADYA
Then let the backlash see what it does to a mother when she can’t leave.
The room works like a living organism, redoubling caution and compassion.
CUT TO:
INT. NEWSROOM — DAY
Anchors, op-eds, politicians yelling. The world argues: art as weapon. Ethics committees convene. A hearing is scheduled. The psyops team’s faces are on screens, praised and condemned in equal measure.
CUT TO:
INT. PARLIAMENTARY HEARING ROOM — DAY
CAPTAIN JOSEPH C. JUKIC sits in a stiff suit on the witness stand. Senators and MPs circle like satellites. A microphone waits. The public watches the spectacle on loop.
SENATOR
Mr. Jukic, did you coordinate messages that led to combatant defections?
SNAKE (JCJ)
(steady)
We used music to remind people of home. We gave them a choice. Choices are the last humane thing you can give someone at war.
A lawyer slams a file—images from the operation. A murmuring gallery. Nadya sits in the front row, stone-faced. Colonel Kreviazuk watches from behind a glass partition.
CUT TO:
EXT. MOSCOW SKYLINE — DUSK
Speakers are quiet now. Families cross bridges. Some streets are calmer. Some scars are deeper. The metrics are ambiguous.
GENERAL ZELENSKY and COLONEL KREVIAZUK stand with RAINE and NADYA on a rooftop, watching the city. COMMANDER GRETZKY and the two LIEUTENANTS stand nearby.
GENERAL ZELENSKY
We didn’t win this war with a chord. But we moved a city.
NADYA
(slow)
We moved people. That’s all any of us ever asked for.
RAINE
And remember — music doesn’t kill. People do. We only gave them a way to stop.
A long beat. The wind carries a single, faint chorus from somewhere down in the city — not loud, not triumphalist — a private song.
CUT TO:
INT. NATO PSYOPS COMMAND — NIGHT (EPILOGUE)
Metrics flash: lives moved, lives lost, debates ignited. Colonel Kreviazuk turns the console off slowly.
COLONEL KREVIAZUK
(voice over)
We used music like a mirror and a lantern. We wanted to show them a life beyond the orders. If the world asks whether we were right — we will answer with the ones who walked home.
The room goes dark. Outside, snow begins again.
FADE OUT.
TITLE CARD: OPERATION WHITE HORSE — THE MOSCOW GAMBIT
END SCENE