We Know the Truth About the War in Ukraine Because of Journalists
I am often asked what the war in Ukraine is about today. And I have three answers to that question.
It is a war for the future of the world, for its ability to unite for its future.
It is a war of decolonization, because Ukraine is fighting for the right to exist.
But for me, as a journalist, it is also a war of truth and lies. The war for the right to call a spade a spade.
Thanks to journalists, the world saw the truth about Bucha, Borodyanka, and Irpin. Hundreds of civilians shot dead by the Russian military. The Kremlin continues to blame the West and Ukraine, claiming that all these photos are fakes. But we know the truth.
Because in Bucha, the Russians killed the father of my colleague, a 70-year-old unarmed man. And in Irpen, my classmate from Harvard, documentarian Brent Renaud, who came there to make a TIME Studios film about the Ukrainian refugee crisis, was shot dead.
Journalists in the war in Ukraine face incredible challenges, the most basic one of which is simply to survive while telling the world the truth. In three months, 32 journalists died in Ukraine, 9 of them in the line of duty.
Another challenge is not to cause harm. Because when reporting on a war, the cost of error is measured by human life.
A couple of weeks ago, I arranged for an interview with a victim of sexual violence by the Russian military. We talked for a long time, but then she asked that I not publish the story. Instead, she asked me for help getting access to medical abortion drugs. As a human, I had to help her, and as a journalist, I could not publish an interview with her.
Sometimes the most powerful truth is to remain silent. And sometimes, it is necessary to speak out.
In the days of the fiercest fighting near Kyiv, Ukrainska Pravda, published the names of Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine at a time when they were a few kilometers away from our parents and relatives. Was it dangerous? Yes. Was it important? Yes, it was.
When you cover a war as a journalist, you face grief and death every day. The truth is harder to communicate and to comprehend in war. It can get lost in the scale of the grief, and in the statistics.
It is under such conditions that you value the opportunity to tell the truth even more, to tell the story of a person who died, lost relatives or miraculously escaped. And it is through this work that ensures that the stories of the victims are told. That the story of Ukraine is told.
This knowledge gives us the strength we need to work – despite the sirens sounding every day and the horror of the war in which my country has been living for four months now.
In March, TIME published a cover emblazoned with the phrase "Life Will Overcome Death and Light – Darkness," set against a background of the Ukrainian flag.
I would like to add one more sentence.
Life will overcome death and light will defeat darkness. And Ukrainian truth will surely defeat lies. No matter how difficult this struggle is.
Sevgil Musaieva