I mean you can edit that out, right?
Exactly
I kind of like us disappearing with the power cut, I think we should leave that in
In this video, we're going to be talking to our Ukraine correspondents who've been
here in the country since day one of Russia's invasion. They're going to be
answering all of these questions that you've been sending us on YouTube. My name is Aya Ibrahim and
I’ve actually just been sent here so I’m really excited to talk to these guys, and
learn a lot from their experience and what they've been covering for the past
year. We tried really hard to get them all in one room, but as the nature of our job,
each of them is somewhere out there reporting on stories. But I'll just start asking the three of
you, do you remember where you were when the first bombs started falling on February 24th?
I will never forget. I was in Kyiv City. I will never forget the sound
of that first loud bang that woke me up early in the morning of February 24th.
What’s the situation like where you are?
People have been waking up to explosions. I have heard several of them shortly after
the televised address by President Putin that he is going to attack,
first of all eastern Ukraine. But as we are hearing the sirens here
in Kyiv here right now, they are really completely bracing for a huge escalation.
And we came to the realization that all that was speculated about weeks up until
this day actually became reality. The full scale invasion has started.
I was actually sleeping when the war started. I did not hear the explosions because we were in
Donbas. I was there and I was supposed to go back that day and Nick was supposed to replace me. And
at four or five in the morning, my phone rang and it was Nick. And he said, Look, it started,
what should we do? And we decided that we will travel back to Kyiv, both of us, and that he
would get off the train and we would pick him up there. And that's what we did, right, Nick?
Yeah, it was pretty bizarre being on that train because we were kind of close to some big,
as it turned out, some big Ukrainian airfields that were being targeted.
Nick what’s happening where you are?
I’m in this small town that’s just waking up and trying to make sense
of all these reports coming in. People here have just told me they’ve heard
explosions coming from the direction of Kharkiv while it was still dark.
And even when you couldn't hear the direct bang, you could kind of feel
the kind of impact the shockwave and the birds were. It was still kind of dark,
but the birds were going crazy. Obviously, they could feel those
impact. And I think the thing that was even weirder was the fact that everyone on the train
was just so calm and kind of unwilling to really kind of believe what was going on.
And I guess a lot has really changed in how people live their lives since that, you know,
that fateful day in late February of last year. And that's something that our users are really,
really curious about. So we have one user who wants to know what's life like in a warzone and
what goes through your minds, our correspondents, when you’re interacting with locals?
Maybe first to the… the everyday life changes all the time. There
was a period in March after the war started,
Nick and I, we left Kyiv briefly in the very beginning, but returned pretty quickly after
a week or so. And Kyiv was absolutely empty and life was really dim down to the very essentials.
As you can see behind me there are very few people on the streets right now, those whom you see,
they try to not stay out for too long. Most people you see - they are either walking a dog,
or they are carrying groceries. So people go out on the streets for their needs, but people don’t
stay for too long on the streets. Of course the situation has been and is tense here.
And that changed dramatically during spring when life returned to the capital and things
went back to normal gradually. At first, maybe one restaurant and one hairdresser opened. And
then more and more and more until by early summer it was almost like before the war.
Life was pretty normal until probably October when these attacks on infrastructure,
these massive rocket attacks started. And then a little bit, the fear came back.
People would hide again, for example, in the subway stations for some time,
but then they would go out again and continue their life. And that's what it is like until now.
Yeah I think for the most part, it is kind of extraordinary how people are able to kind
of compartmentalize their experience. So people might have a family member - a cousin, a child,
a partner of fighting, at the same time, still managed to somehow go about their work,
earn money, you know, try and distract themselves by going to cinema or going to a stand up
concert. That all still happens in parallel. What I find very astonishing and I wonder how Nick
and Mathias see that, who more often actually they go to the frontlines as well, talking to locals
who obviously can't just leave. Like, obviously we can exit, we can leave Ukraine and then come
back. But the stories that the locals tell us, sometimes it is a lot to handle because you're
listening to them and you hope by listening to them you give them some comfort, actually,
because they can tell your stories and you can amplify them. But at the same time you just really
wonder, I wonder personally, how do people deal with this constant feeling of not knowing actually
what is happening the next night, the next day. That is quite stressful, I have to say. Yes.
Well, I'm trying to understand their situation and try to be adequate in what I ask and, you know,
try to tell them that they can also refuse to answer certain questions. But aside from that,
I try to really keep my professional composure because I won't be able to do my job if I am too
much engaging, maybe, with their fate or if I let this influence me psychologically.
yea I mean, obviously there is another side, one could say, “side” to the story,
and that's obviously the Russian side. You guys are in Ukraine. But we've had
quite a few questions from users about how do we integrate the other side of the story.
One user kind of perhaps provocatively said: Mostly war reports are one sided and don't include
other side of the story. How do you include the other side of the story in your reporting? And
perhaps I'll just flag here for our viewers that we did have quite a sizable bureau in Moscow. That
was unfortunately, because of the authorities, shut down shortly before the war started.
Authorities have closed DW office in Moscow, revoking accreditations for all
our journalists there, and has banned DW broadcast in Russia as of today.
I have to admit, it's just simply very difficult. Yes. Even though the Bureau Moscow was closed, we
still have sources there in Russia. We still have information. But when I'm in Kyiv, for example,
or other parts of Ukraine, from where I'm hearing, Ukraine said that about the frontline advancement,
Russia said this, but I have actually no information to prove neither side, actually,
it's not just the other side, but neither side, sometimes to say that this has really happened.
I think it’s in the place like a war zone where it's very important for a journalist to really say
what he or she knows and what he or she doesn't know and maybe include them in that story.
I mean, I do follow Russian Telegram channels, propaganda channels. These are Russian war
supporters, war reporters who fully support the Russian invasion. And they post pictures
on Telegram. They post their own materials. And sometimes you can compare, like, sometimes there
are incidents where you see the Ukrainian version and the Russian version. Also these images,
they travel from one side to the other and are used then in other channels and so on. So of
course I try to include information from Russia, from the Russian side as much as I can. And
with, of course, what Fanny just said, the caution that is necessary. But we
cannot travel to the other side often, like people ask, Why are you not reporting from,
I don't know, Donetsk or … that's not possible. We cannot cross the line.
I was in Kyiv from 2017 and we were constantly, every couple of months trying to get accreditation
for Donetsk, Luhansk. And that was even at a time where I, as a DW journalist,
had Russian accreditation. So I could go to Crimea with Ukrainian and Russian permission
to do so. But I couldn't get access to Donetsk, Luhansk, even though I had Russian accreditation.
So we definitely made those attempts. We tried repeatedly, but they just didn't want us there
because I think they had a very clear idea of the story they wanted to tell the outside world.
And they were only going to invite journalists of whom they were fairly confident that there would
be some level of, kind of sympathy, inverted commas and anywhere else which wasn't welcome
there. They didn't want people just walking around looking for stories on the ground.
Moving on to your great reporting and all of the pieces that you filed for us in the past months,
there have been dozens and, a lot of our users wanted to know
about a memorable story that you worked on. Here's one question from the user: What's the
best ‘Faith in humanity restored moment’ you've witnessed and one that was the opposite of that.
There's one particular couple, I remember, that went back to Bucha - it was in May - for the
first time because they fled, obviously in the early days. They went back to find out
that their house burned to the ground and they found two jars full of pickles. And this couple
couldn't be happier about these two jars of food because they said the Russians didn't find this.
At least we still have this to eat. Life goes on!
And in Ukraine, so often I've met people who could smile in the
midst of devastation. And these are the stories, of course, that stand with me.
Just, how people are keeping up. And that's something that shows very often, every day,
somehow how people got busy in the beginning of the war, trying to do something to get together,
some, I don't know, food and give it to refugees passing by in western Ukrainian cities. It seemed
like everybody at that moment was trying to do something he could. And many Ukrainians
were surprised and they were saying like: Oh, I didn't know that we care so much about each other.
It was definitely a moment that kind of brought people together. And.. the other moments where
we feel like this is so desperate, that's mostly when you talk to people who have had some
traumatic experience. I remember one example that was
particularly sad and touching for me was when I was talking to a woman who was standing next to
one of these mass graves that were exhumed and her son was being exhumed from the mass grave.
I know that his soul is gone, I know this is just a
body, but it’s the body I used to hug and love. It’s my child. I cry every day.
And that's, of course, terrible moment. I just had to turn away
after finishing my interview and get back to compose myself.
I just want to go back to something that Fanny mentioned about
how that's also kind of difficult on you guys covering the story day in and day out,
coming in and out of the country and maybe even for you Nick. You'd been in Ukraine
for years before to kind of see, you know, this happened to the country. So what do you guys do
to take care of yourselves mentally and your own mental health while covering this story?
I'm a bit uncomfortable talking about this because I'm very conscious of our privilege
being able to come in and out and not having to kind of be here if we don't want to be here,
which was the case for at least our male Ukrainian colleagues.
For me, what helps most is this really immense privilege to be able to leave
the country from time to time. And then I also try, when I'm out of the country,
not to check my messages, not to check Twitter, not to check Telegram channels often.
I'm sorry, just to come back to that, I have to say my consumption of family gossip has gone up
hugely. The more dramatic things are here in Ukraine, the more I want to hear about kind of
somewhat some distant cousin’s 60th birthday and what went wrong. And I just love kind of
hearing all those details and just kind of filling my head with that kind of stuff.
Yeah, maybe that'll happen to me as well. And finally, my mother will be happy that
she had a daughter who turned out to be a journalist. Maybe Cherie can cut that part out.
Our viewers are also really, really interested in the look forward, you know,
further into this conflict or perhaps even out of this conflict. And one user wants
to hear your impressions regarding hopes for a meaningful post-war reconstruction in our
lifetime. Is that something that you see? Is that something that you feel might be on the horizon?
I think people are quite hopeful in Ukraine that there will be a rebuilding pretty soon
when the war is over. But the question really is in terms of mental rebuilding,
like just how many people will be affected mentally in a way that this may have an impact
in terms of the future of the society as a whole.
I think the bigger kind of worry is how many of the millions of Ukrainians abroad,
the refugees, how many of those people will actually come back.
But yea I am hopeful. I've seen lots of Ukrainians, as Matthias mentioned,
be kind of positively surprised by their own country, feel kind of invested and supported
by each other. I've seen people kind of just talk to strangers in a way that I didn't see before,
just the small thing. And it's kind of seemingly meaningless. But just as I was walking back to the
hotel tonight, a lady in her, maybe late forties, slipped on some ice and literally she was kind of
immediately surrounded by five people trying to help her. She could barely kind of escape
from all the people trying to help her up and take her to the pharmacy and people giving her advice
on what kind of cream she should use. And that is definitely something you didn't see in Kyiv
before. There was quite a lot of people were polite, but it was a pretty individualistic,
pretty atomized society. And that definitely feels very different.
I think we'll leave it at that. Matthias Fanny and Nick,
thank you for taking the time out of your reporting day for this conversation.
Do I hang up and everything is lost or do I have to press save or something?