you answered an important thing about the work of international journalists, and it seems to me that it is also important here that you make the war on other continents in faraway corners of the world understandable for your local audience, let's say for the americans, probably in this context - this is very important for ukraine because it is another of wars, which has been going on for some time and will not end in a couple of days, how to maintain the interests of the foreign audience in such long wars, and it is no coincidence that at the very beginning of the invasion of ukraine, there was a huge appetite for any information, about 4,000 international journalists came from there and rushed immediately to lviv and kyiv , and of course there were others who went further south from the east to cover the events on the front line, but many of them had no experience preparing reports about the war or about ukraine, of course, some of the

specialists who a significant number of regional experts who covered events in russia, ukraine, poland know ukraine well, so they better analyzed what is happening. but most of us worked in the balkans, africa, the middle if you look at my experience, i worked in russia and the region before, but my area of ​​expertise is the middle east, the balkans, and africa, but you know, if you, like me, have already covered 18 soldiers, you begin to see certain patterns , especially with regard to vladimir putin's soldiers and his terrible methods who call these schemes of waging war, all this is very similar to what he did in chechnya, what was told about as a journalist and a slob in cheese, this is his tactic of attacking civilians and not just attacking them, but actually forcing cities and countries until their complete subjugation, it is terrible, you have

noticed that you see certain patterns in putin's wars, but i would like to ask if you still see any features of the current war in ukraine, maybe here too. it is a matter of changing the perspective. in ukraine, part of the investigative team all my life since the age of 22. i worked as a journalist, so i cannot separate this part of myself. but in fact, even throughout my long journalistic career, i have always been human rights journalism, therefore, i tend to pay attention to international humanitarian law and whether it has been violated, i notice war crimes, a phenomenon that we see now and that i have seen in many other conflicts. these are not selective and absolutely shocking attacks on civilians who are trying to escape from the combat zone shelling of corridors with which people,

in particular women and children, are trying to leave rocket shelling of shopping centers shelling of train stations and therefore of people who wanted to evacuate continues we also see environmental terrorism in places such as chernobyl or zaporizhzhia where nuclear facilities are attacked, which causes horror not only in ukraine but also in this world, we also see extrajudicial executions that took place in buch, when people were dragged out of houses and basements and shot, we see torture, captivity, filtration camps , trade children, all this is a violation of the rules of a fair war, if you delve into political science, its philosophical aspect, there are simply unjust wars, what is happening in ukraine is just an unjust war, obvious attacks on the civilian population are not enough real evidence that russification is happening, an attempt to destroy ukrainian culture, ukrainian

traditions, the ukrainian language, and this is also very serious. we are only just beginning to study it carefully, but i remember , for example, the kurds . for many years, the kurds have much less territory and it is not actually fully autonomous , it is not a country like ukraine. thus, efforts are being made to deprive the ukrainian people of their language and culture attacking the cultural centers of the library is a very strategic move, it is not just an accident - it is part of the strategy of putin's united plan. you listed all these types of crimes that have already been seen in ukraine, and some of them could be considered part of the crime of genocide. of course, this is what will be discussed later in international the courts for which it will currently be involved in the collection of evidence. i witnessed three genocides in

my lifetime in one rwanda and the massacre of the yazidis. in my opinion, there are enough war crimes and beasts in ukraine now and it is worth focusing on them not complicating it with genocide, genocide is a crime that is very difficult to prove, currently there are already thousands of thousands of other crimes that should be proven and included in war crimes cases, and i think that in this sense we have something to do for many years, and by the way, this is happening in ukraine with a very rapid speed in bosnia and on it took many years, so there was a tribunal that the former yugoslavia in gaza was created a few years after the end of the war, but it took years to bring the criminals to the hague and try them and that's it one thing, they were not enough, a lot of people were convicted of systematic crimes that took place in boss, other trials of the tribunals. war

crimes also took a long time, so justice is proceeding very slowly, but i am somewhat encouraged by the fact that we are now moving very quickly, that the mechanisms of justice are being established, that the office the prosecutor general in kyiv is doing an excellent job so that many investigators from different teams are working throughout the country, including our team of the project recommendation, the important thing is that we all there should be different positions on how we work with our protocol, our methodology, so that we do not interview people repeatedly, not traumatizing again and again, from your recent states, you mentioned the criteria that the collected evidence of war crimes must meet, because even as a journalist, you also in a certain way recorded these evidences, but then they could not be used in international courts. you are also a journalist and you most likely write something

down in your notebook, so you can also indicate the date of the event. i always set the time when something is happening, but i was taking journalistic notes, so when i was called by people who worked in the gas industry and dealt with the cases of war criminals for the most part, i didn't remember anything because they called me 10 years after something happened and they needed very specific information. i started working in the 90s before everything could be archived in online databases this was even before email and i received my first email in 1993 so before that everything was written by hand and then my records were ones that didn't have legal compliance and me too and i could barely read my handwriting to be honest a lot of the notes were made on the front lines when they were taking very quick notes so our criteria

is to follow a very specific methodology i can't share all the details because it's confidential and our the testimony is confidential but the researchers most of them are journalists some are activists our team trains very carefully we teach them to follow a template format when interviewing they also have legal training preparation and very soon we have to hold another training session. i involve various experts to inform them about international humanitarian law, international criminal law and also about injuries. i think it is very important for journalists working in a combat zone to realize that they are interviewing in people who were injured , it is very important not the aspect of the journalists themselves, ukrainian journalists who are currently working everywhere , they themselves are extremely prone to traumatization, and this can lead to post-traumatic stress

disorder in your personal and professional experience have you experienced something like this and maybe you have some ways to prevent it i know nowadays everyone works 24/7 and it sounds very silly but you need to sleep you really need to sleep 8 hours a day of course if you work let's say in donbas near the front line it won't work but when you go home you really need to somehow recover grounding i don't want to say this but i'm afraid everyone has to prepare psychologically for the fact that this will still continue i don't i think the war will end tomorrow i would like it to happen but i don't think it's possible so i think people should prepare for it to be

as strong as possible physically and psychologically it's really important and you know i like to communicate with my friends from sarajevo who survived the siege of sarajevo which lasted three and a half years and it was a difficult siege there was no water, there was no electricity, there was constant shelling of the city and people survived, many died, but others somehow survived it, so i often like to involve my friends in the barn to communicate with people in other war zones, for example, during the war in syria, they created a whatsapp chat for people from syria from one of the towns that survived a terrible siege, where people died of hunger , they cooked soup from leaves, they lived in basements for months in a row from relentless shelling. i connected them with my friends from sarajevo and they started discussing survival and this is what i would like to do when i have more time to work on

uniting communities with other communities that have already gone through this so that people share their experiences as open a kindergarten at home, how to make an oil lamp, how to keep warm in winter when there is no electricity, how to make cheese from rice, all this is a survival tactic that i would really hate for anyone to have to go through, but in war, sometimes you have to find your most secret resources. and this is also psychological help to people didn't feel alone with their problems. that's how i think the most important thing during the war is to realize that you are not alone. i remember one of the most moving stories that happened to me in my career after the fall of saddam hussein's regime in cancer in 2003 somehow i thought i got into the torture cell, the air force and his secret service

muhabrat did terrible things to people, i went into the cell and saw on the wall there was an inscription made in blood when someone was there. whoever got into this after me place you are not alone i was very moved by this because i thought these are the most beautiful words in the english language but they can be translated into ukrainian you are not alone i mean someone has been in this place before and i hope they survived but you are not alone you are not alone in the international equals, you are not alone in this conflict, there are people who worry about you, there are people who bring the kremlin and putin to justice, we allowed many criminals to escape justice despite the terrible things they did, so bashar asitu-siri still rules this country, this is the country that he and vladimir putin destroyed, burned, they got away with it, but now we don't want putin to get away with

what he's doing in ukraine. we want him to be brought to justice. i'm for this experiment . at the moment, in the midst of the war, it is very difficult for us to imagine reconciliation, which, for the most part, should come after the war. and of course, at the moment, this seems unattainable, but let's look at classic examples, let's say rwanda after the genocide, which was highlighted today, there are murderers who have been released from prisons and live in the neighborhood of relatives of those killed, what are the most vivid examples of post-war reconciliation you remember, you could probably imagine how this stage will one day be fought back and after the war in ukraine, rwanda is a very good example, although under the leadership of paul the kagama often took radical measures to create the atmosphere in the country that exists today, there are many critics of the kagama and the fact that he makes it a reasonable dictatorship and the fact that today in

rwanda it is illegal to emphasize one's ethnic affiliations to define oneself hutu tutsi but i understand that randa for these years, well, healed is too powerful a word. you don't heal so quickly from a million killed in three months. it's impossible, but moving forward, reliving the past, reckoning with the past is extremely important. another example is releone. sierra leone experienced one of the most violent conflicts in africa. in the 90s, when the rebel army cut off the hands or hands of civilians as a living proof of its power and its atrocities, but now it is a really good example of a country that functions after the war, it is always difficult to separate everything not only black and white, because neither war, nor peace, nor further reconciliation is ruled out in black and white, you can always pull out some example that will demonstrate that's how it didn't work and that's that,

that's what needs to be changed the constitution needs to be changed rewrite the southern republic is of course the most outstanding example of truth and reconciliation nelson mandela was released after decades of imprisonment forgiving his enslavers so ukraine is not yet ready for reconciliation but when the time comes it will come in its own way but in the eighth it didn't happen the dayton peace accords that put an end to the days actually did not allow transitional justice to happen and without justice there will never be healing i remember how my bosnian friends said we'll see each other you in 20 years. when we start a war again, i am very afraid that you will continue this vicious circle of war if it is not possible to establish a system that will punish the perpetrators for the evil committed. you covered 18 armed conflicts during your career. i think they once asked themselves the question of

nature, why do they happen again and again, is it because of the human tendency to start wars or are people simply unable to draw proper conclusions from previous wars in their own or other countries, how do you explain it to yourself all wars ultimately boil down to that one man or one woman craves power , so vladimir putin wanted to erase the border between ukraine and russia, this is a desire for power regardless of whether you think that he wants to build a great russia or that he wants to conquer the ukrainian people, it is about preserving his power and the same the same thing happened in syria in israel, who conquered the real people on the west bank of the jordan river, in gaza, the same thing happened when the hutus raged and killed a million tuds, the rwandans were like that in east timor and in chechnya, so it is always about the desire for power and sometimes also about human greed,

we can analyze them as you like, wars. in this way, we could say that the war in sierra leone was about diamonds and the search for these bloody diamonds. also about the evil that some people inflict on others and i am still shocked when i reread the testimonies of people when i see the photos from buchi and that my mother showed me that the wife of the deceased showed me i thought i had already seen everything especially in the middle east there torture especially sophisticated but i just couldn't believe these things that happened in ukraine that were caused by russian soldiers it was just horrible now it 's very important for you all to hold on the war will end sooner or later but it will end and you will have a chance to heal from it but that is still far away and the people who

started this war and who tried to destroy your country should be punished, they cannot simply continue to erase their own borders, because if putin erases the border of ukraine, what will prevent him from erasing the borders of other small countries, such as the baltics, and who will fight for them of course it is extremely important for us to believe that there will be punishment for putin and the russian leadership, in particular the military leadership involved in war crimes in ukraine, but at the same time we understand that it is almost impossible to really see a physical putin on the dock in some international court or tribunal. believe that there is such an option."

told an extremely inspiring story about young people living in the gaza strip in the middle

of this crisis in the midst of the impossibility of predicting what will happen in the coming days, but at the same time they plan their future where they are. it seems to me that our image of war as the years pass is precisely created by such stories that have been remembered , perhaps there are some symbolic stories of war that you still remember from your first wars that symbolize optimism in war and maybe you are such stories already met in ukraine, i think the gas is a really good example of resilience, the people in the gas have experienced a terrible and brutal occupation by israel since 1967 , they are treated as non-humans they are constantly forced to hide from the bombing this just the horror of gaza - it's a tiny place that is often shelled and people have nowhere to go they ca n't leave they can't go to egypt and they can't go to israel they're stuck there and

the biggest disappointment is that the world keeps recognizing israel's rightness and looking away the gasses at least pay attention to ukraine and no one sees the suffering in the gasses israel constantly makes excuses for its many human rights violations so it is very difficult to work there it is one of the most disappointing places ever worked because there is no justice there, it will never be there in the article you mentioned and which i wrote for wenyatt feyer last summer i talked about the lives of young people, i have been writing about the humanitarian situation in this region for 30 years, so now i wanted to focus on the demographic aspect on young this is a story about hipsters in general and how they survive there knowing that they are forever trapped in this place, it's like being in hell but at the same time loving god because these people have an incredible spirit, they've been through so much, so i think

if you ask me what optimism is during the war, i will point out what i have noticed from personal experience is that, despite the horrors of war, sometimes you meet incredible heroes, and i do not mean only government officials or soldiers, i mean ordinary people in villages who organize the baking of bread, let's say i remember one baker in valais who did not close his bakery despite the threat to his life, he continued to bake bread because people needed bread or a woman who organized a kindergarten in her home because the children had somewhere i had to study or a rescue firefighter who came out of retirement to help for too many years when i worked in war zones, i met only such people, and this leads me to believe that there is some kindness in human nature, that

in addition to the evil that causes wars, it also has another side and the other side is people who are really very heroic, i see it in ukraine, of course, zaporizhzhia were, are, and will be ukraine, we will not forget, we will forgive, we will not retreat, we will not give up, new times give birth to new symbols. good evening, we are from ukraine, the symbol of our indomitability and indomitability, a symbol of ponst and memory

of ancestors, a kind heart and motherhood, a family symbol, mastery, a symbol of despair and the main symbol of fantastic people, weapons, drinks, medicines, equipment, to whom to list leave this choice, you want to contribute to the defense of the state, but we know how to invest in military bonds, support the cess already now buy a military bond worth 1,000 hryvnias or euros and return your funds with

interest let your money already work for our joint victory together with the number of deposits unlimited details on the bonus gold.ua site, this car has turned from a family car into an evacuation. i see how many people need this evacuation . i.e., he was an example of such nations being built. it's scary, it's difficult. with a direct hit , it's bratska mykola gave his life so that we could be heroes from monday to friday, 21:15 in marathon, the

only news that most people in the west understand that it will never be possible to associate with the birth of any treaty because everyone already or almost everyone must understand that for russia it will always be weapons and political tools. i welcome you to the first channel of public broadcasting. thank you very much for agreeing to this interview. september 19 came into force the ban on entry to the baltic countries and poland, in particular citizens of russia, in your opinion. will such a decision affect russia and the citizens of russia in any way ? that they are not considered welcome guests in the

european union as tourists while they come to ukraine as uh occupiers when they come to ukraine as murderers they should not expect the european union to accept russian citizens who have the same passports as the gucci killers murderers in all cities of ukraine, eh, and those guys who have the same passports, they should not develop that europe will meet them as excuse me, tourist. and at what expense do they want to vacation in europe at the expense of eh looted ukraine due to the spilled blood in ukraine and they want to rest with us like here, i even think it’s a shame that they are even somehow even the so-called russian oppositionists, they are trying to tell us that it is somehow not immoral that we are all there -he is responsible for everyone, not everyone supports putin, and so on. they all have

the same passport. i can’t even imagine myself as a russian, as a russian who does not support putin means that he knows exactly what is happening in ukraine and what a russian does. the courage to cross the border of the european union as a tourist, i understand that a russian citizen in such a case turns to europe and says i want to be a political refugee i want to cross this border as a political figure who is against putin россии пожалуйста, we can accept such people and unconditionally accept them later. well, how can you expect that any russian citizen will now go to the european embassy and say, “oh, god, you know there, though my friends are killing people who are not free in ukraine. well, i want to take a break to see all of paris. yes,

i don't know if my wife is drinking champagne or i don't know, but it's just that they have no shame if they try to travel around europe as tourists, then they go where they need to go with their passports . i do not understand at all how anyone can have doubts that the european union should act differently, and i am proud of the fact that my country and the strange baltics did what any civilized person should do. we do not accept bandits as tourists. well, in fact, since september 19 in finland has remained the only available land route for russians in the eu. how do you assess such a move by this country? i hope that finland will return to the policy of monerheim, who built a special line in the 1930s so that the russians would not go to uh, let's say by land. they built the entire mannerheim line in finland, and then i hope

that finland, which today is already a member of nato, will also act like all normal countries of the world, which must now close their borders to russian tourism. you said that it would be good for the european union to adopt a decision banning the entry of russians at the general level. besides hungary, do you think there are any other obstacles for the eu to adopt such a decision? the european union, and in favor of russia, it sometimes goes directly, let's say, it goes directly, i'm talking about russian propaganda, yes, like, well, russia is just right, and so on and so on . about russian propaganda is being rebuilt