Oksana Grytsenko is a famous Ukrainian journalist, playwright and screenwriter. As a war correspondent she’s covered a lot the occupied regions of Donbass and Crimea. We asked her to give our students some advice on how to report in conflict zones.
When you are a journalist, be careful when choosing a destination for your vacation. Because if riots or war suddenly start in the country you are traveling to, you would likely have to cover it.
This is exactly what happened to me in August 2008, when I arrived in Georgia for a vacation and Russia sent its troops to this country on the very same day. Since I was a Kyiv-based reporter for the AFP news agency back then, my colleagues from Kyiv told me urgently to go back to Ukraine or start working for their office in Tbilisi, which was short of reporters. I decided to stay and it was the first conflict I covered.
I had to see newly destroyed houses, interview refugees, and run away from the bombs that were being dropped from Russian airplanes. But it was only a fraction of what I saw in 2014, covering the EuroMaidan Revolution, annexation of Crimea, and Russia’s war in the Donbas. My Georgian experience was nothing compared to those events, so I made a lot of mistakes in terms of safety and reporting. Now I can give you some advice so that you avoid them if you decide to become a conflict reporter.
Safety and planning
In late May 2014, it was relatively safe for Ukrainian journalists to work in separatist-held Donetsk, especially if they worked with foreign media and had a passport issued in eastern or southern Ukraine. That was my case. I worked with the Guardian and the Kyiv Post (which is seen by many as a Western publication) and traveled together with my colleagues from Donetsk to Lysychansk to cover one recent big battle.
We had a long and productive day and were returning late at night by taxi back to Donetsk, where we lived in a hotel. We could not imagine what kind of danger would face us when we crossed a separatist checkpoint in Horlivka on that night. The checkpoint that seemed very easy to cross in the morning became a fortified outpost at night. We spent more than an hour at that checkpoint talking to some intelligence guy (likely a Russian one). He searched our belongings very carefully and started calling some commander to make a decision about our arrest. Luckily, nobody answered his call and he decided to let us go.
We learned a very important lesson from the story — avoid traveling at night and be always alert when you are at war. When the situation looks peaceful at the moment it may change abruptly. Another important lesson is to always carefully plan your route in advance and take all the possible precautions. It’s better to overestimate a danger than to underestimate it.
Some young journalists may think that brave reporters should go anywhere regardless of danger. But my experience tells me that if you go somewhere where fighting is ongoing, you would likely waste your time. Nobody gives interviews while hiding from bombs. A good strategy is to visit the place soon after fighting when people have time to observe the consequences and tell about them.
Facts are not easy to detect
When I was traveling with other colleagues by taxi to report about Russian troops approaching Mariupol in August 2014, it was very hard to figure out what was the situation in the small villages to the northeast of the city. We were stopping the cars coming from that direction and asking what was going on in Shyrokyne. In the first two cars, the drivers assured us that severe fighting was taking place there, but when we asked if they personally had been in Shyrokyne, they said they had not. In the third car, a driver told us that he was heading directly from Shyrokyne and that the situation there was quiet.
The lesson from this story is — don’t trust everything that people at war tell you about the scope of fighting, number of casualties, and other events, especially if they didn’t see that directly but only heard it from someone else. Even first-hand witnesses are unreliable because when there is a real danger, people tend to exaggerate it. The best source would be your own eyes and the eyes of the colleagues who are traveling together with you.
I strongly advise you not to travel to the conflict areas on your own but instead have a reliable travel partner. In my case, this is photographer Anastasia Vlasova, with whom I did most of the war reporting over all these years.
War is not an adrenaline rush
The group of reporters working with Western media who covered the Donbas in 2014-2015 was quite tight. Since then, many of them have left Ukraine or even quit journalism. The separatist-controlled part of the Donbas became inaccessible not only for Ukrainian journalists but even for foreign journalists, who knew well how the war had started. Then, a bunch of other foreign journalists started coming to the Donbas, mostly for quick “parachute” reporting.
Sometimes they were not real journalists but some bloggers or so-called “war tourists”. Many of them were quickly posting their photos in bulletproof gear and helmets on social media and bragging about the “cool things” they saw. Sometimes this happened even with young Ukrainian journalists who first arrived in the war zone.
I ask you never to do this either when you cover the war in Ukraine or elsewhere. The war obviously gives you bright memories and adrenaline shots. But, with a more careful look, you would definitely see that war has nothing to do with adventure. War is about death, injuries, disabilities, lost relatives, lost property, lost homes. War is about psychological traumas for children and adults, it’s about abandoned pets that roam near their houses waiting for their hosts. War is about a lot of dirt and tears.
Most people you would interview writing about war, both soldiers and civilians, are deeply traumatized. Please remember this. Be patient and respectful with them. Protect them and their identity if it’s necessary. Journalists often work by the same principle as doctors. It is: “do no harm” to those who trust you.
Article was written by Oksana Grytsenko, Ukrainian journalist, playwright and screenwriter.
