Tanya covers top corruption and money laundering among the business elite in America, Russia, and Ukraine. She is a Pulitzer Prize finalist for her series of investigations FinCEN Files, a project of BuzzFeed News and ICIJ (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists). The project revealed that large international banks are actively involved in money laundering by corrupt officials, drug traffickers, and fraudsters.
She also worked on the Pandora Papers, an investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). Kozyreva covered the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the military invasion of eastern Ukraine. She co-founded posipaky.info, a website that helps track the business interests of MPs. For Ukrayinska Pravda, she wrote about the 2016 US presidential race and was the author of the investigative series “Battle for Washington” on dubious funding sources and offshore accounts used by Ukrainian politicians to pay US lobbyists. When Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, Tatiana covered the war for The Telegraph, Sky News, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and The New York Times. Currently, Tanya is studying at Harvard University as a Nieman Fellow. Today she shares with us how she experienced those first days, months of the full-scale war, what it’s been like, how it’s impacted her work and, of course, what she likes most about studying at Harvard.
We have been living in this reality of the full-scale war for more than 10 months. Can you please tell us where you were, what you were doing on February 24? And how did you think about those terrible events? Did you prepare for something like this before it actually happened?
On February 24, I woke up at 4 am, like most of the Ukrainians. The explosions outside the window woke me up. The beginning of the war was not a shock for me, because I had been following the reports of “imminent invasion” in the international media since the fall of 2021. Putin’s press conference at the end of December confirmed that it was only a matter of time before Russia invaded Ukraine.
So I put all my investigations on hold and instead of taking a New Year’s vacation and celebrating Christmas, I worked on stories about Ukraine getting ready for the invasion. So, together with my colleagues from The Telegraph, we wrote many stories about training of the Territorial Defense and fighter jets of the Air Force of Ukraine. We also went to the villages on the border with Russia and Belarus to find out whether the locals were preparing for evacuation. We flew to Kharkiv, talked to veterans and volunteers of the city (it was Kharkiv where, according to US intelligence sources, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine would begin). In other words, by the time Russian troops crossed the border, I was already mentally prepared for this – I always had my passport, cash, credit card and turnstile with me. We also had rented cars in case of evacuation, which we eventually used for several months in a row to move between cities.
On February 24, we were working in the field. We were recording people desperately trying to leave the capital, filming traffic jams on the outskirts of the city, queues at the railway station. Then I was most impressed by the story of a young couple with a baby, whom we met on the Golden Gate metro platform. They were so confused and disoriented that they left their apartment with one diaper and two slices of bread. The beginning of the war was something totally unexpected for them, they did not know where to go and what to do.
Then we went to the Polish border, wrote from there about the humanitarian crisis, covered how Ukrainians had to live in a car for many days to reach the desired safety abroad. For some time we worked in Odesa and Mykolaiv, Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia. We met the convoy of the first Mariupol residents who managed to leave the city after many months of siege. We were in Donbas, Lysychansk a moment before the occupation of the city, we came to Kramatorsk after a missile attack on the train station, we came under fire in Pisky (Ukrainian village). So we had to hide in the dugout for a while, drink tea with the military at the front. After all that, we also went to the reoccupied villages of Kharkiv region. And there, of course, it was also a bit hot. And I’m not talking about the weather.
So, from what I could find online about Nieman Fellowship: “Nieman Fellowship invites journalists from all over the world. Among the requirements is 5 years of experience in journalism. Selected fellows will spend two full semesters at Harvard.” Can you tell us about your experience as a fellow of this scholarship, how did you manage to get there, what was the competition like?
The Nieman Fellowship is one of the most prestigious journalism scholarships in the world. The best journalists from all over the world apply for it – the competition is fierce. I sent my applications for three years in a row. Due to the coronavirus, for the last two years the number of international students was quite limited. And it was only on the third time that I was lucky enough to get into this program. So, of course I agreed, despite the fact that Ukraine is now in the spotlight of all international media.
How did I manage to get this opportunity? I think it is not an accident, but rather many years of hard work. As they say, first you work for your resume, and then it works for you. It’s unfortunate that there are not many independent journalists from Ukraine who have international experience.
At first, it was a little uncomfortable in the US, it was annoying that passers-by know very little about the war in Ukraine. Generally, it’s difficult emotionally to be so far from Ukraine now. For the first two or three months after I arrived here, I didn’t dare to turn off my air-raid alert and log out of all Telegram chats. But at some point I decided that since I am already here, at Harvard, it is worth using the time effectively. That is, I should gain knowledge that was previously unavailable.
What are you working on at Harvard today? What do you like the most about the American approach to education, how is it different from the way we teach in Ukraine?
The American approach to education is very different from the way we, Ukrainians, go about it. Here you can immediately see the course plan that the professor offers. And depending on whether this plan fits you personally, you decide whether to take a particular course or not. In addition, you can go to an introductory lecture to make sure that the style of presentation of the professor is good for you. There are, for example, courses in which the professor enters the classroom, offers a topic for discussion and does not interfere in the conversation during the entire time. He just observes. So, there are quite controversial teaching styles here. But students themselves decide what to study. No one imposes agendas. After all, you can leave your course at any stage. Professors here are very tolerant to this. I would advise Ukrainian universities to adopt this kind of classroom experience. I think it is not only about freedom, but also about the ability to self-organize your studies, and it improves one’s long-term planning.
Another key difference is that here, if you come to a lecture without having read the homework, it will seem to you that the class is being taught in Japanese. This is extremely motivating for a student, it makes you want to be very well prepared for the class. On average, the homework is 50–100 pages of text per one course. Most students here take no more than 4–5 courses in one semester, because the pace is just frantic, as well as the amount of new information. At first, it may seem to you that the course is very basic and there is little new information, but this false first impression disappears very quickly. You don’t even notice how quickly those two hours of class period pass.
How often do you communicate with other Nieman fellows about Ukraine? What they ask about the most, what are they most interested in?
Half of our group are American journalists, the other half are journalists from different parts of the world. All my classmates follow the news, of course, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine is not new to any of them. Several journalists from my group have covered the war in Ukraine. For example, Magnum photographer Moises Saman went not only to Lviv, but also to Kyiv and Kharkiv and saw everything that was happening there.
Every time some terrible events happen in Ukraine, my classmates try to encourage me somehow. Everyone understands that for me the war in Ukraine is a very personal story, it’s about my home, my family and friends. It is difficult to remain objective and detached when talking about this subject. This is actually the biggest challenge for me personally and for Ukrainian journalism in general.
Do you like the way the topic of Ukraine is covered in the United States?
In general, if we talk about international media, there is much less written about Ukraine now than there was at the beginning of the war. There is a feeling of information hunger, but also I think that people are simply tired of this topic. Strangers on the street may ocassionally ask “is the war over yet?” And then they usually explain it by saying that “the media don’t write anything about the war anymore”. There is really very little information about the topic. Usually it is one story about Ukraine in a whole issue. Often these are issues that don’t have linked materials from Ukraine. And typically it is not because of the political preferences of the media, but simply because of economic reasons.
We must realize that covering the war is unprofitable for international media. It’s usually the case that highly paid journalists go to those war zones, and each of them has a security consultant, several producers, a driver, and a cameraman (or a photographer). The longer the war lasts, the greater the risk that attention to it will simply fade.
Our project is aimed primarily at journalism students who are just learning the craft. What advice can you give to our younger generation of journalists who are striving to make a name for themselves in this world? These are young people who happen to be working now in the most extreme conditions of war imaginable. Maybe you have some lessons that you learned from your own experience in Ukraine or during your studies at Harvard?
I think the most valuable advice for those who want to master the craft of journalism is to understand (sooner rather than later) what journalism is, how it differs from propaganda and PR. I would advise reading the New York Times and watch BBC, follow the reports and read memoirs of world journalists like Clarissa Ward (CNN). No doubt, learn foreign languages, take courses at the best universities in the world – many of them are available for free online. Of course, you need a lot of training in order to work in war conditions. It’s first aid training, learning how to stay as safe as possible in the war environment. You need training on how to talk to those people who have experienced or are experiencing trauma because of the war… The latter, in my opinion, is a very underestimated skill in Ukraine. Finally, it is important to work with foreign media, work with journalists who have a good deal of experience covering conflict zones. Knowledge is extremely important, but experience in the real world is of equal importance.
What do you personally dream about when you return home from Harvard?
Now it is difficult to dream about anything or make any plans for the next six months. Of course, I hope that the war will end soon and that Ukraine will return to the borders of 2013. I think only in this scenario, long-term peace is possible. But dreams do not always come true, and dictators do not always want peace.
Personally, when I go back home from Harvard, I would like to return to my usual work – investigating financial crimes. Although it seems now that the investigation of war crimes will be a priority for a long time. This is why in my first semester of studying at Harvard I took a course on “Laws of war”, and I must say that I learned a lot from it. Not everything is so clear actually when it comes to international humanitarian law. There are many loopholes that the Russian president skillfully uses to his advantage. If we are talking about goals that I can achieve in the near future, I think it will be writing a book about the war.
Translator: Ivan Chepaykin
