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From Our Own Correspondent
A Year in Ukraine
00:28:41
A selection of stories from correspondents who have covered the war since February.
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- [00:02]
BBC Presenter
BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts Good morning.
- [00:07]
Narrator/Reporter
As we come to the end of the year, we look back in this edition at the most significant News event of 2022 Russia's invasion of Ukraine. As Russian troops built up at the Ukrainian border back in February, Russian officials continued with repeated denials of plans to invade Ukraine as Western governments grew increasingly anxious about what loomed. And as the Ukrainian writer Yevgenia Belorusets wrote at the time, the war was unrealistic, absurd, it could not be imagined. And when you wake up in the midst of war, it remains the same, still unimaginable. Today we revisit dispatches from the war zone, written at different points and from different places during the conflict. First, upon news of the invasion on the morning of 24th of February, several BBC correspondents were quickly deployed across the country. Fergal Keen was one of them. He reported from Lviv, a key transit point in the west of Ukraine, to the rest of Europe. There he witnessed vast numbers of Ukrainians flooding through the main train station, their belongings stuffed into small suitcases or backpacks, trying to escape to safety to countries like Poland, Germany as well as the uk. As he looked on, he remembered the story of a couple he met when he was in Ukraine's Donbass region years before, when Vladimir Putin first seized control of Crimea. The conflict there never ended.
- [01:46]
Fergal Keane
I have found myself searching the crowds and praying I would not find them. Anatoly and Svetlana, the beekeeper and his wife, my friends from Pesky in the Donbass whose tenderness for each other has been a constant counterpoint to the brutality of eight years of war in Ukraine. The last time we met, a year ago now, he looked at her and said in front of all of us gathered at the lunch table that he loved her. Who could not love her? He asked. Then he laughed. We all laughed with these 70 year old romantics. Svetlana leaned into his shoulder. Yes, of course I would be happy to see them, to take comfort from their humor and kindness. But not in this place and time not reduced. Clutching their holdalls and shuffling forward inch by inch towards the departing trains of Ukraine's remorseless exodus, I should begin in a time of heat and sunflowers and ripening grain. It was July seven years ago, and I was visiting the almost deserted village on the front line outside Donetsk, capital of the Donbass. Anatoly and Svetlana were among a handful of mostly elderly people who were clinging to life amid the shattered buildings and shrapnel strewn streets. Their home three bedrooms And a little living room and kitchen had once belonged to Svetlana's father, and he'd left it to his daughter and her husband, knowing they would care for it and tend to the little plot of land at the rear. Like so many rural Ukrainian families, they planted vegetables and fruits for the table. Anatoly introduced beehives. My first sight of him was tending the hives, talking in a low voice to the bees, drawing out the boards lustrous with honey, which he offered to me with the assurance that I wouldn't taste better anywhere in Ukraine. Not anywhere else in the world, I replied. It was their great joy to pile food into visitors. There was homemade potato cake, ham, Svetlana's pickles and coleslaw, a superbly sharp horseradish salad and piping hot fresh bread. There was vodka for those who wanted and gallons of fruit juice for those who did not. I stayed with them that night. We sat outside, watching the tracer bullets fly across a starlit sky and listening to the artillery working back and forth across the line of contact. I went back the following winter. The snow was thick. Soldiers wandered by, going to and from the front line at the top of the village. The war had settled over the land like permafrost. It wasn't going anywhere. By now, almost everybody had left Pesky, Yet Anatoly and Svatlana were still there. This house was their home, Anatoly said, although increasingly they lived in nightmare, never sure when a shell might land on or close to them. And then I heard that they'd left Pesky and moved away from the fighting, two hours away from the nearest combat zone. That was where I found them, in the village of Comar early last spring, and where, again, I was treated to one of their hearty meals. And we caught up on the news of their lives. Pesky had finally become unbearable. The strain on their nerves was too much. A family friend had organized for them to move into this new house, where there was a large garden. Anatoly had purchased a new swarm of bees. The couple seemed content. There were rumblings of an escalation in the war with Russia, but nobody took them too seriously. Svetlana said they hoped it was just talk. I told them that they deserved peace as much as any people I'd ever met in a war zone. Then the president of Russia decided to invade Ukraine, and in doing so, to plunge the lives of millions of people into chaos. I tried to reach Anatoly and Svetlana, but their phones did not ring out. But eventually we made contact. Anatoly was at home, but Svetlana was in hospital recovering from COVID He was sure she would be well soon, but they weren't going to move, even though the Russians could easily come their way. I thought of him alone, listening to the news of the war, wondering when this woman he adored would be released from hospital and praying they would not be uprooted once more. I think of them today, watching the exiled thousands pass me at Lviv station. I think of them every time I hear armchair experts talk about a new security architecture for Europe and debating Ukraine as a sphere of influence, as if the lives of its people were some possession that could be parceled out between the great powers. Anatoly and Svetlana are worth more than that. They are worthy of peace, these makers of good bread and honey.
- [06:29]
Narrator/Reporter
Fergal keen closer to the front line. Quentyn Somerville reported from Kharkiv in Ukraine's northeast. Just a few weeks into the war, the fury of Russia's artillery bombardment was felt not just in this city, but across many others, including Mariupol, Chernihiv and Sumy. The offensive was relentless and the killing of the city's inhabitants indiscriminate. In Quentin's reporting near Russian lines, he came across the bodies of those that died, many abandoned in the street. Here he reflects on whether the morbid images he saw firsthand should be included in coverage of the conflict.
- [07:12]
Quentin Somerville
The two bodies were hanging from a makeshift gibbet on the side of the road east of Kharkiv. It looked like two men wrapped up in winter clothing with bulky jackets and woolly hats. As our car whizzed past, I saw that they had been strung up with thick rope. A sign attached told the Russians explicitly where they should go. On the opposite side of the road was a long traffic jam. The people inside, most fleeing from Ukraine's second largest city, could consider the two figures for longer. My stomach turned as I shot another glance through the rear window. Then the freezing wind lifted the bodies effortlessly. The hanged men were only mannequins, but omens too, of what lay ahead. Ukrainian front lines here are holding, but to live in Kharkiv for the last week and a half is to watch a city disintegrate under Russian rage. The artillery rains down vengeance on the civilians and soldiers below. Roads travelled only yesterday are freshly cratered today. Most afternoons, neighbours gather outside their homes to sweep up shattered windows. This large city of boulevards and parks, cathedrals and Soviet era housing blocks appears abandoned. But there are still hundreds of thousands of people. Though Many dare not leave their homes. Russian rockets grads smash into apartment buildings, killing and wounding the old, the young, the civilian, the soldier. They aren't precise weapons, they are fired in a barrage and there is a particular horror as they land one after another and the explosions get louder, closer, and you wonder if the next one is for you. The city's residents have taken to sleeping in shelters and the underground. One soldier told me his elderly mother had made up a bed in her bath, hoping it was the safest place in her apartment. As I write, the shelling continues outside and at least 247 people have been killed in this city, 13 of them children, since the invasion began. The dead are everywhere, in the streets, in the parks, in their homes. And they can appear unexpectedly. Last week our car stopped inches from a body which was half buried among the snow on a wooded trail in Nolan Kharkiv. I spotted a pair of trainers sticking up, then a hand and what remained of a man. Others hadn't bothered to halt. A thick tire track ran across the man, crushing him flat and frozen in the snow. He was a suspected Russian saboteur. We were not far from Russian lines. Do you think we'd leave a Ukrainian like this? A soldier asked me pitilessly. The Ukrainian military, keen to take journalists into trenches before the invasion, are reluctant to do so now that artillery and bullets are flying. The Russian tactic of surrounding and besieging cities makes it difficult and dangerous to do justice to the misery inside. In this war, as in others, we are permitted to film young soldiers, keen eyed and full of patriotic ambition. And still we can record solemn lines of coffins draped in crisp, bright flags when the same young men are returned dead to their villages. But the indecent middle, the part in between, gets harder to reach and to show. I remember in Afghanistan, the UK and US governments stopped us from filming casualties. For years, war's cruel canvas has been reduced and airbrushed. But at Kharkiv's edge, I caught another glimpse. Ten, perhaps a dozen dead Russian fighters lying in the snow across a petrol station forecourt. In Iraq, Syria, Libya, Gaza, the dead announce their presence with a stench that can never be forgotten. Here, in temperatures of minus 15, there is no smell and little blood. We were able to show some of those pictures on television. There is little dignity anymore, perhaps in those few shots that was revealed. And to tell tales of battle without corpses is to tell a lie. Ukrainian journalists blame Oleksandra Krushinova. Yevgeny Sakun and Viktor Dodar died reporting here, along with Americans Brent Renaud and Pierre Zagzyruski. Dozens more have been injured attempting to bring you the reality of this terrible, enormous conflict. Earlier this week I drove to another bomb site. The sugar pink apartment block had been torn open like a dollhouse, probably by a Russian cruise missile. Family pictures still hung on the remaining walls. A bath and sink sat in place four stories up, even though the bathroom floor was gone. As we headed towards the ruin, which was still on fire, a soldier stopped us. You can film, he said, but don't show the bodies.
- [11:55]
Narrator/Reporter
Quentin Somerville In April, after Russians withdrew from Bucha, once a sleepy suburb of Kiev, images and reports began revealing some of the worst atrocities of the invasion so far, far from any sense of relief at liberation. Many civilians were left wrestling with grief after loved ones had been torn away from them. With hundreds said to have been raped, tortured, or murdered, 144 Jablonska street in Bucha became notorious for being the nerve center from which Russians inflicted violence on a scale not previously seen in the conflict. Russia continues to deny allegations of war crimes. Yogita Lemaye spoke to one woman who experienced some of the worst brutality.
- [12:45]
BBC Presenter
Irina Abramova was shivering as she spoke but didn't seem to notice. An icy wind was blowing through what used to be her home, and the torn metal sheets that were dangling from the roof looked like they were about to come loose. She stepped back and gently held my arm, pulling me back to this was my kitchen, she said, pointing towards a room that had been charred, oily black suit covering its walls and floor. Her living room was a scene of utter destruction to the house that Irena shared with her husband. Alleg stands at the corner of Yablongska and Voxalna streets in Bucha. Before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Bucha was barely known outside the country, a small, sleepy city home to people who worked in the capital, Kyiv. Now its name is known all over the world as a place where civilians were tortured, raped, and murdered while it was under occupation by Russian forces. Irina was stoic, at least initially, as she told me her story. On the 5th of March, Russian tanks and armored vehicles pulled up on the street outside. She heard the sound of an explosion. Irina thinks it was a grenade thrown into the house. Then she heard shooting and voices, ordering them to come out with their hands up. Her husband, Oleg, replied, don't shoot. We're civilians. The Russian soldiers first said, we've come to rescue you. Then they shouted, where are the Nazis? Give us their addresses. You deserve to be punished because because you've allowed there to be Nazis in your government. Irena and Oleg pleaded with them, telling them they had nothing to do with the government or the military. Fire and smoke had started enveloping parts of their home. The soldiers shouted, put the fire out. Her husband stepped out. They stopped him. They made him take his shirt and sweater off. Then they made him kneel on the street outside and shot him in the head. Irina told me, her voice steady, her composure broke. When I asked about Russia's claims that its soldiers are not deliberately killing civilians, she looked away in disbelief and then replied, tears running down her face, my husband was a welder. He'd never held a gun in his life. He was a peaceful man. When Irina ran to Oleg's side as he lay on the street, he his heart was still beating. She held him till he died. They'd met nearly 20 years ago. Oleg was five years younger than her, a tall, handsome man with a kind smile. All she has left of him now are a few photos on her phone and his gold wedding band, which she wears on a chain around her neck. Everything else they owned was lost in the fire that burned down their house. He was the best man in the world. Kind and caring. He worked hard because he wanted us to have everything we needed, she said. And we did. But now I'm alone. I would give anything to bring him back. When I think of war, the image in my head is not of destroyed homes and buildings, but of the pain and anger visible on Irina's face. I want the world to know that the Russians are killers. They're not human, she said, sitting in the street next to a legs body. Irina had shouted at the soldiers who shot her husband, Kill me too. I have nothing to live for. One of the men walked towards her and pushed the barrel of his gun against her chest. Then he said, I don't shoot women, and walked away. For weeks, alleged body lay in the street. Russian soldiers didn't allow Irena to bury her husband. Blood stains are still visible at the spot where he was killed. She's now covered them with an embroidered handkerchief. Bucha's mayor estimates that at least 300 civilians were killed here. And after the Russians withdrew from areas around Kyiv, Ukrainian authorities took Oleg's body to gather evidence of war crimes. Once it was returned to his widow, she held a funeral for him. Irena stroked his ring and said, he was my whole world, my whole family.
- [17:02]
Narrator/Reporter
Jugur Lemaye When Russia announced it was shifting its focus in the war to Ukraine's eastern Donbas region, it was clear they'd underestimated the strength of Ukraine's defences. Within the Donbas region itself, a propaganda war was underway. The tentacles of Mr. Putin's propaganda machine had spread across the border to reach some Russian speaking Ukrainians. Allegiances became blurred with Ukrainian informants tipping off Russian soldiers on the whereabouts of their compatriots. For those fighting the Russians, it became harder to identify who they could trust, says Olagarin.
- [17:43]
Ole Gurin
In another time and place, it would have been a relaxing drive in the countryside beneath a clear blue sky, past golden fields of wheat. Those colors blue and yellow are reflected in Ukraine's flag. But we were on our way to an artillery position to join troops fighting for their country and their lives. Our escort was a young army officer brimming over with tension and trauma. Only people who are living through this war can understand what it is, he said. It is blood, it is rockets flying, it is loud noises and homes burning. It is sudden deaths every day. Then he revealed another danger. Some of the locals give away our positions to the enemy, he said, almost spitting out the words. His bitterness is hardly surprising given that between a hundred and two hundred Ukrainian soldiers are being killed in action. And every day since the Russian invasion, I have met countless Ukrainians who rushed to take up arms to defend their nation. Builders, lawyers, nurses, business owners, men and women from all walks of life. There is a blue and yellow wall of patriotism here, but there are also shades of grey. The awkward truth is that some Ukrainians still back Russia. These days that support is largely subterranean, but it surfaces here and there in the Donbass region, which borders Russia and is largely Russian speaking. It was here in 2014 that Kremlin backed separatists rose up and seized territory. Eastern Ukraine has been at war since then. Officials here say a small number of civilians who refused to be evacuated from from cities now being bombed by the Russians are waiting to welcome the invaders. Two weeks ago, in a frontline area in the east, I met a Ukrainian man fighting against the Russians alongside his only son. Both were armed to the teeth and wearing camouflage uniforms and dark glasses. They looked like actors in a big budget film. But the war on their own rich soil and is all too real. And when it began, some of their pro Russian countrymen viewed them as the enemy. When we came, some people were against us and saw us as occupiers rather than liberators, said Yaroslav, the father, who has a hard bitten edge. But in time people started accepting our view of history. They saw that we were digging trenches and defending the area. Those who were waiting for the Russian peace abandoned that idea when their homes were shelled. In the frontline city of Lysychansk in Donbass, we met more troops concerned about the enemy within. They were rushing to unload aid supplies for civilians, but the troops begged us not to film anything. Some locals might recognize it, one said, and reveal where we are. These neighboring nations have a tangled past, but speaking Russian doesn't necessarily mean you support the Kremlin, nor does it protect you from Russian artillery. Just ask Katya, her husband and their 12 year old son. When we met, the slim, slight woman was moving distractedly from one pile of belongings to another, trying to distil her life into what she could carry for her family. The writing was on the wall, or rather the metal front door, now pockmarked by shrapnel. A shell fell here yesterday, katya told me. My son and I managed to hide. I covered him. He understands everything. He knows the Russians have invaded and that they are advancing. As we spoke, more of Moscow's artillery was slamming into the city with sickening thuds on every impact. We are Russian speakers, she added almost plaintively. Our parents taught us the language and we studied in Russian schools. But in the next breath she added, we love our country, Ukraine very much. It is very hard to leave here. Then she and her family fled their home with little more than their passports, hoping to join her brother abroad. They are now refugees from President Putin's so called Russian world.
- [22:24]
Narrator/Reporter
Ole Gurin. And finally to present day Ukraine. This week has seen air raid alerts issued across Ukraine as a fresh wave of Russian missiles has targeted major cities. This comes at a time when Ukrainians are preparing for Christmas, which is traditionally celebrated on the 7th of January by by the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. The Ukrainian author Andrei Kurchov has spent much of this year travelling, telling the world about the plight of his country. Earlier this month he returned home to Kyiv to join the festivities.
- [23:03]
Andrei Kurchov
On frosty mornings, Kyiv wakes up, apparently peaceful and happy. The snow crunches under your feet. The mayor promised that Ukraine's main Christmas tree would be placed on Sofia Square. As usual, we will have to go without the festive market, the wooden huts selling Christmas decorations, mulled wine and hot food that usually encircle the huge tree and spread out along the streets of Kyiv's ancient center. Nobody wants crowds together anywhere in the city. We never know where the next missile will crash. At one point, a period of freezing temperatures was replaced by warmer weather, leaving Kyiv wrapped in a thick fog. As well as warning of poor visibility. Kyiv's meteorological office informed the public that they should not panic if they hear explosions coming from northwest of the capital, from Bucha and Irpin, as pyrotechnic services would be blowing up mines and unexploded shells in the area. All day I listened out for them, but no explosions reached my ears. I'm home at last. After nine months of telling people about Ukraine, I can finally walk the streets, sit down with friends, and see the tired but determined glow in their eyes. In Kyiv, I have become a listener. Everyone has their own story, the moment when the war came home to them. I have heard the stories already, of course, but it is different when you are standing in a battered front room or driving past the ruins of a village. And when they have told you about how they survived, they always ask, what do you think? When is it going to end? As if my time away has made me clairvoyant. I tell them most likely in the new year, in 2023. But I am not sure why I say that. Our friends Yuri and Olga live a three minute walk away from us, down the hill from the Golden Gate. Olga has trouble walking and does not go out much, especially in these slushy conditions. The apartment building has a lift, but nobody uses it. Even when there is electricity, they never know when it's going to be switched off. Kyiv's dark streets have a magical quality about them. The darkness is silvery blue in the area around the Golden Gate. The bars stay open with or without electricity, at least until curfew time approaches. Often located in cellars, you have to enter them with care. But once inside, candles and battery powered lamps lend a cozy atmosphere. The bar staff are pleased to see you. Businesses must survive, but you will need cash to pay for your drink. With no electricity, the card machine won't work. There are candles on the tables, and beyond them, shadows and quiet voices. When there is light, the volume goes up. But in the darkness, people even laugh more quietly. There is a sense of hibernation. One of the customers has just fallen asleep. Our friend Olga is having trouble staying positive, and not because of the power cuts. Her husband, Yuri, works backstage for the National Opera and Ballet Theater, and he will be going with them for guest appearances in Paris all over Christmas and New Year. Olga will be Left to greet 2023 on her own and quite possibly in the dark. But it's good news for the theater. The seasons abroad will allow the ballet and opera troupes to work in normal conditions for a while, despite air raids they have been putting on fantastic performances for appreciative audiences who are seated only in the stalls and lower boxes so that they can be evacuated to the cellar. If the sirens sound, the drama theaters will work through the holidays. The Theatre on Podil has a production of 1984 based on George Orwell's dark novel. It is obviously popular. I, for one, would prefer to watch a comedy, ideally all the way through, without interruption from power cuts or air raid warnings.
- [27:39]
Narrator/Reporter
Andrei Kirchhoff. And that's all for today. We'll be back again next Saturday morning. Do join us.
- [27:50]
Ole Gurin
Hi, I'm Helen Lewis and I want to tell you about a podcast I've
- [27:53]
BBC Presenter
made for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds.
- [27:56]
Ole Gurin
It's called the New Gurus, and it's
- [27:58]
BBC Presenter
about how everywhere you look on the Internet, people are giving advice, advice they claim will transform your life, advice that gets them thousands, no, millions of devoted followers. These online profits are telling us how to eat, how to think, how to get rich, how to find love, how
- [28:16]
Ole Gurin
to manage our time.
- [28:18]
BBC Presenter
These are the new gurus.
- [28:20]
Ole Gurin
Just as people will say the Protestant Reformation and the printing press went hand in hand, so too did this birth of the new Internet culture really give rise to this new religious landscape. Subscribe now to the New Gurus on BBC Sounds.