congratulations, this is a special program, the ukrainian service of the voice of america, journalists at war, coverage of ukraine in the world, and i, tatyana vorozhko, for more than two months, the world has been watching the war in ukraine almost in real time, for atrocities , suffering, heroism, the invasion of russia in ukraine took the lives of thousands of civilians and soldiers, the war carries deadly danger and the people who cover it today we will talk about the unique challenges that the war in ukraine poses for media workers welcome our guests michael weiss journalist director of newsline for more than 10 years, covered international topics with a focus on the middle east and russia, runs a column on ideas, a lobbyist contributes to atlantic publications from new york of youbox the bear public - and other media. and i am a co-author of the new york times bestseller idle inside the army of terror and the author of the threat to reality, how the kremlin uses information, culture and money, polconro

and photographer, members of the board of trustees of the london front club, the founder of the organization's branch in ukraine, has more than 25 years of experience in documenting conflicts, in particular in libya, syria, and cancer, egypt , afghanistan, and the balkans, based on his memoirs about the events in syria, a hollywood film, private war, and a documentary film were shot, his works appeared in the rolling stones de garden, the times, new york times, bbc and other world media member of the board of the reporters without borders organization oleg kornienko military correspondent of the ictv tv channel on ukrainian television for 14 years worked as a soldier of ictv in luhansk region and donetsk region from 2015 to 2019 after the start of a large-scale offensive russia vs. ukraine returned to the front again covered the battles and their consequences near kiev and michael

michael congratulations to the war in ukraine you covered the war in syria extensively do you see the difference between these two wars in terms of physical danger to journalists and civilians syria was not very many military correspondents you just mentioned my colleague paul maricolvin who died there paul himself was seriously wounded in the hawks i went to syria i was lucky i was there in 2012 but with the free syrian army just when they were liberating a part of this city, when there were no airstrikes, we had no direct clashes with regime forces, so i managed to avoid any violence in ukraine, we also saw attacks on journalists, in particular on some of my colleagues from the zadelibist, one of the fox correspondents did not lose his life, there is definitely a big

parallel between what we saw in syria even before the russians intervened in 2015 and what we see in ukraine now, as we wanted to show an excerpt from an interview with the program director of the committee the protection of journalists does not come, an organization that promotes freedom of the press around the world, in other previous conflicts, syria is not like that. many journalists left in this case, many journalists are threatened by the same threats to the civilian population, and we see how the civilian population suffers in this conflict, how they are threatened by attacks and direct attacks against the civilian population and civilian objects, the conflict is also changing rapidly on many fronts. maybe at some point somewhere will be safe, but that does not mean that in this age it will be it is safe soon, not even the conflict is changing rapidly, it contains many threats to journalists, those who threaten the civilian population, they

need the same protection in their work, which the civilian population also needs, we see how in this war it is not possible to provide this, do you do do you i agree with karls in your opinion. how prepared are the journalists and other media professionals who come to cover it in ukraine to protect the actual security of beria, a guy with a foreigner? even in london, we saw that they started killing people it became clear to us that information has actually become a weapon, just like in syria, they tend to kill the messenger very quickly. so we are the frontline club. this is a team of freelancers who have been covering wars for 25-30 years . however, when you get into a situation where the regime or the forces involved are actually directly targeting journalists, i believe that everything possible should be done to help, we have run a fundraising

campaign to provide resources and medical assistance journalists in a war environment i had about two minutes to make a decision to save my life when i came under attack in syria i knew how to put a tourniquet i think a lot of journalists covering actions on the front need this information basic training can really save lives so this is our the goal is to provide direct training for work in hostile environments and basic or advanced first aid training for journalists working on the front line. barley who do you train do you train reporters producers or maybe someone else also uh seasonal screen we train freelance local producers on the ground in every war local producers are very important they are called fixers we like to call them local

producers they grease the wheels of the news machine without people on the ground, there would be no international news such as it is today, and they are as important as journalists, that is why we train local ukrainian journalists, local producers and international freelancers who do not have the support of international or large news organizations, i have a question for you. how has your work changed ? unfortunately, the first front became brighter and we saw in the first days that the front was actually 20 km from kyiv and the war continued here. the second has definitely changed. at the beginning of the war in donbas when everything was happening approximately you understood where the enemy was, where you could hide and in general you could understand approximately the situation of the front line now at the beginning of a full-scale

invasion it was difficult to understand, moreover, already now, during the repeated attack on ukraine, russia has already openly used its manpower, and it was still large-scale. well, once again, it hit a completely different weapon than what was in the 14th and 15th minutes of this all 8 years ago, plus what concerns we discovered new facts for ourselves, the dates when the missile strikes. unfortunately, we never encountered this, and it turns out that in fact the journalists became hostages to some extent, because in fact, when russia attacked ukraine, we immediately broadcast it, and russia could quickly adjust the fire and finish that one the infrastructure that she could, this is the limit of freedom of speech and the limit, after all, responsibility for

every word and for every life of people, but it has become even more likely . of potential war crimes, oleg. do you feel that this is part of your work, of course, because we understand well that when it began, efforts to occupy ukraine, in particular, to seize kyiv, gave we had the opportunity to leave the capital, but we stayed here because we perfectly understood our responsibility and our mission. do you feel during interviews with victims or witnesses of the beast that part of your job is to provide potential material for international investigators

. the truth and to gather facts both for the audience and for posterity. i was in borodyanka, where russian planes carried out airstrikes on residential buildings. the prosecutor general of ukraine told me and a few more journalists that the death toll in borodyanka is predicted to be higher than even in buche . currently, ukraine cooperates with international partners in conducting investigations of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and i definitely believe that journalists play a decisive role in this, not only those who interview witnesses on the ground , take photos and shoot videos, but also investigators open sources, such as belenket, they did an incredible job not only regarding ukraine, but also other topics, they are simply checking this information that is spreading on the internet, so i believe that journalists have a moral obligation to chronicle the atrocities or apply this franko and time a year in

your opinion or there are international reporters who come to ukraine and cover all these horrors . they are preparing to make the expert world to a large extent, there are many experienced professional journalists who have been doing this for a long time, since the days of bosnia they played a big role in bringing the bribe-giver to court and there are many very experienced people who have covered the wars in syria, libya has undergone revolutions, this conflict is taking place very close to the heart of europe. therefore, this opens up opportunities for many young journalists who can make a name for themselves by reporting from ukraine profession therefore in such situations you have a whole set of people he is very experienced to those who are doing

this for the first time also i want to share a short excerpt from an interview with a very experienced bbc journalist saro rensworld i asked what struck her the most during a reporting trip during the first three weeks of the war in ukraine, probably after going to kharkiv and seeing a whole city that lives underground. i have never seen anything like this. the metro station has turned into housing for people who live in wagons for days and weeks and only get out to charge mobile phones at the exits is simply unbelievable that in 2022 this will become the most powerful, the most moving experience was also to see men at stations who put their children and wives on trains and then were forced to leave them and potentially fight in a war it was really horrible and i didn't expect it

to happen but our whole team was in tears it 's just unfathomable that this is happening because of a war that has no reason other than russia's land grab and power play vladimir to you have you covered many conflicts around the world, do you see other differences besides the ones mentioned in the working conditions of media professionals in ukraine , especially considering that it is a developed country in europe with access to the internet by social networks, etc. for journalists, these places are very attractive in terms of work in the series, for example, the situation was the opposite, anything that we did was dangerous, for example, to drive 50 meters,

you come in. you have all the modern premises and facilities and everything seems quite simple, but you also face with a different type of enemy, this is a situation of total war on the front lines. you face large weapons of wide destruction on the battlefield on a scale that only grows to mass over time, like in syria, people are used to it here there were no restrictions from the very beginning, that is why you have the false feeling that you have a lot of normality in life, but in the places of the front, it is a real war, and it is in europe, the world really has not seen such a level of war for a long time, so there are not so many people with such experience in total war where russia is probably chechnya is a good example when russia recently arranged such an explosive hell that is happening now on the internet, there are many users of social networks, how does it help

reporters, the credo will call the word mass you know it is incredible it is good for editors in london because they can have a whole mass of information in front of them and it's really something relatively new. i think when we were in libya such opportunities and communication were just beginning it's a great tool for focusing your resources when i worked at the sunday times newspaper it was me and marie and in the editorial office we were constantly thinking where to send us now it is not such a problem because in general you can see where to send journalists it can also work against you when we were in syria we were targeted we were trapped because we calculated through our satellite phones you can also be targeted quite easily and i understand the reluctance to report an explosion on the internet immediately when it just happened because it gives the russians a

lot of information that they don't necessarily need i mentioned you could you follow up on how that affects to the work of your reporters, first of all , human lives are important, the safety and security of human lives is the highest priority but russia entered syria the so-called deconfliction mechanism with the united states and other parties included providing the united nations with coordinates of hospitals, bakeries, civil infrastructure to the russian government, which it openly used as targets in ukraine, there is a great danger that the same thing could happen, this is one of the reasons why the ukrainian government recognized as a crime the dissemination of the locations of the ukrainian military on video or in any what social networks when i was in kyiv and by the way as a reporter i wanted to take pictures and film and at the moment when my camera

was aimed at the ukrainian checkpoint my driver my fixer everyone in the car said don't do this you will be arrested, so this is a reminder of how sensitive such things are, but our duty to our profession, to other people and to history, is to document it, and journalism is the main thing in our task. how do you work with the ukrainian military and officials who provide information about the development of hostilities? do you verify information from ukrainian officials and do you use information from the other side with russia in mind do you present their point of view see well first of all yes during the war we completely we only refer to it as it sounds. as for the freedom of speech, the sequence is only official data, and we can only refer to it. as for the data of russia, well, i’m sorry, but it’s a war, we’re running after an exclusive, a war, unfortunately

, during a war, you have to forget about exclusive and before telling something, we think about it seven times and sometimes we understand some information better not to say. this is what, unfortunately, unfortunately, our foreign colleagues do not understand when they turn on immediately after shelling missiles, when immediately, in fact, on the whole the world is talking about where the rocket landed, but tell me, please, this is the understanding that you don’t need to run for exclusives, you don’t need to report on explosions very quickly. in the first days, in fact, there was a lot of information, a lot of videos, because we understand what is possible in the 21st century. yes, the internet, telegrams, social networks, and everything

spread quickly. during these two months, both the royal population and the journalists understood that there was no need to do this. and just today, by the way, unfortunately, in the second month of a large-scale war, finally, the minister of defense of the ministry of defense and the union of journalists developed this mechanism. what, for example, if a missile hits we can go to a civilian facility to work at the scene, but we can talk about it publicly on the air after 3 hours, we already have clear rules, if we get into a military facility, then we can talk only after 12 hours well, there is another aspect, look at us very often air raids and we also have such er let's say we have a rule until the air raid ends we don't say where the shelling was and i forget

that we also have ukrainian magazines that were captured tried to show what is happening in the occupied territories before even if i want to go record a comment to the russian military or what to understand what will happen to the ukrainian journalist , the so-called eagles of the dpr, the lpr at one time ukraine recognized them as terrorist organizations and eight years ago well for eight years in a row, we have never gone there. we do n't talk to terrorists either. i want to share one more criticism, which is popular among ukrainian professionals and the audience, directed at western changes. please note a short excerpt from an interview with ukrainian media expert nataliya ligachova. we have a full-scale war here. we have a full-scale war, brutality with the death of a huge number of people, it is absolutely wrong to call it the ukrainian crisis, we

do not have any crisis in our country, they started a war against us, which by the way, she showed that we do not have any division into south, east and west. as russian propagandists have been trying to present for a long time, they are all united in their hatred of the external enemy and the desire to repel him. the same standards, but they do not understand that they want to be objective . they become precisely biased and play into the hands of the russian aggressor near ani, on the contrary , they become biased because they play into the hands of the russian aggressor i would like to ask michael if you agree with what the experts said. and what is your view on this issue. how do you choose the words difficult? anyone who works in the western media

, the difficulty lies in the obligation to be objective or appear to be objective. i often encountered this when covering the syrian crisis. i apologize for the syrian war. you see, i myself fell into the trap . could be easily disproved with just minimal self-investigation i think what has happened over the past few years especially in the united states as a result of domestic disinformation problems not least related to the president himself who has been spreading all sorts of falsehoods and conspiracy theories every hour is in that the snakes have improved their editorial approach to these topics , for example i have noticed a sharp recalibration of many prominent media organizations in how they deal with the statements of the russian government regarding the war in ukraine that is, now they are working on it much better than the statements of the russian government on the

war in syria when it comes to using terms like crisis look actually it is a crisis but it is something much more isn't it a war of aggression an unprovoked invasion and the occupation of sovereign european land by a hostile state actor however, it takes a lot of effort and time for me to explain it exactly that way, so i understand why people look for such terms as crisis or war for the title, but as a reporter i think that it is very a delicate balance i have the luxury of not just being an investigative journalist but also a commentator so i can insert my own editorial viewpoints into some of my work and no one is under the illusion that i think i have described this war as unprovoked russian aggression if i were a presenter at the bbc, a correspondent of daniyor times, it would be more difficult for me to say this, i understand ukrainians , but i also think that the general moral imperative of the narrative in the west is very pro-ukrainian, it is very difficult to find any major news organization for

with the exception of one or two presenters on fox news, but the reports on fox news are quite good, who would be real apologists for putin. perhaps this is in itself a triumph of the ukrainian nation and the ukrainian people. i wanted it to be continued. how do you train reporters, producers and actors in this regard ? you choose the words editorial how do you avoid getting involved in the propaganda war in order to become an instrument in it i uh actually it's not difficult as far as training is concerned - this is my first big experience in training journalists and i focus on security issues at sungate times we had fantastic freedom you know one of the reasons we were attacked the night marie and i went on the air is what we called those acts murder we witnessed it and we had on that's right because we were the only

journalists in the area and the next day marie was dead remy was dead and i was wounded i think michael is right in the context of this conflict i think you will have a hard time finding someone who would push putin's line because for 20 years we prepared with this narrative that putin is a master of propaganda of the secret art, but in fact it is not like that, you know zelensky and the ukrainian people managed to do what the kremlin has not managed in the last 100 years, these are the last people who cling to power and behave with it extremely dangerously, they are attacking and this is their last chance however, as a rule, i think that western journalists give the correct names to the events, you know, now there are many people who will directly call it an outright massacre and war. i think that this is the general consensus, but you you know, there are also large organizations that still have impartiality. sometimes it can be quite unpleasant

when it overloads, there is not necessarily another equal, opposite and balanced point of view. i think that trying to find this balance is really difficult, but it is not impossible and i personally would tell someone who saw the murders don't invent a nicer name if they kill babies they kill babies and this is murder there is no other term i think there is a time to be polite and there is a time to call things your own i don't think that is one of the reasons what you mentioned is that americans and viewers around the world you are telling your own stories in your own words my question to michael is how do you approach interviewing ordinary people especially those who are grieving how do you get them to tell their stories ukrainians

are quite willing to tell their stories, i interviewed several eyewitnesses of the events in borodyanka who willingly shared what they saw during more than 40 days of russian occupation, they want to know about these facts, they understand the importance of their story was heard all over the world. and as i pointed out, this atypical clash of the military with the military, this war is directed primarily against the ukrainian civilians, the russians showed themselves to be inept and clumsy in the battle with the army, which, at least on paper , should have been significantly inferior to the russian one, and instead they took out their anger and hatred on of ukrainian people, high-rise buildings in borodyanka , again, this is all civilian infrastructure around there were no military facilities , shops, restaurants and apartment buildings were destroyed when i was there, the emergency services pulled people out from under the rubble, lifting the concrete, the whole building was simply ransacked by the russian

occupiers, i went into apartment buildings where boxes of jewelry were emptied, clothes were pulled from the wardrobe, a photo album, torn wedding photos of one couple were scattered all over bedroom as an act of desecration the worst thing i see is the defecation marks of a russian soldier on the kitchen floor of a young couple directly on the man's robe there is nothing military about it this is just an act of barbarism this an act of pure pathological hatred, and the west should understand that this is not an ordinary war , very dirty and inhumane tactics are used , and as i said in the first article, innocent men, women and children are paying for it. thank you, we will remind our viewers that today we are covering the war in ukraine international and ukrainian media, our guests, journalists, director of newslim megazing, michael weiss, british photographer, paul conroy, non- correspondent of ictv, oleg kornienko, this was a special issue of the ukrainian voice of

america service, journalists at war, coverage of ukraine in to the world my name is tetyana vorozhko thank you goodbye stay safe

bring back the wind espresso fifth and direct sign the april 4th petition rrt concert was thrown off the digital airwaves without warning ukrainian independent tv channels espresso fifth and direct this is at a time when there is a war going on in ukraine with russia , including information, this is a restriction of freedom of speech, this is a restriction of the rights of millions of viewers to receive information, this harms the national interests of ukraine, turn the wind back espresso the fifth and direct access to the website of the cabinet of ministers of ukraine register, find the petition page, read its text and press the button to sign, protect freedom of speech in ukraine, it is very important in this difficult time to be aware of what is happening, we tell the

news and help to understand the events, but the war can make its own corrections in the event that the broadcast signal is lost, see espresso on the satellite now espresso has become available on two satellites at once, if you do not have a satellite dish and the broadcast signal has not yet appeared, search for espresso on the internet, our youtube channel espresso ukrainian view thank you for watching, we , the employees of the espresso tv channel, address the president of ukraine, the nsdc, the national council for television and radio broadcasting, other state bodies, and all our viewers, representatives of the radio broadcast concert on april 4