with our reporters in the field

Special issue of “Profession reporter” on the outbreak of war in Ukraine, with Radio France reporters in the field: Valentin Dunate, Thibault Lefevre and Omar Ouahmane.

In Kiev and Lviv, the atmosphere was barely more joyful than in Paris, stiffened by the health crisis, and the false rhythm of the presidential campaign. Family walks, restaurants, songs, laughter, dance. Oh sure, there were the Ukrainian authorities busy preparing air-raid shelters, but that was just in case; posturing for journalists who came to cover a war that would not take place. We had to stop with the din of Americans playing at being scared. It was noise for nothing, or almost, noise to serve geopolitical negotiations. This means that if the threat was real, no one really believed in it.

In the Donbass, entangled in its low-intensity war with demarcation lines frozen for eight years, between the Ukrainian army and the Russian separatists, it is another story. The shells were flying at night. And when day broke, the two parties accused each other of having opened fire.

Thibault Lefevre and Jérémy Tuil, who spent ten days there, recount the trying working conditions in a lunar daily life. Not just landscapes. Hear the missiles whistle, and realize that the inhabitants don’t even pay attention to them anymore. That’s probably why the faces are shattered, and that smiling is not so obvious.

Thibault and Jérémy live in their car, a 4×4. A good car is a guarantee of safety. A car of your own that allows you to leave as quickly as possible in the event of trouble. It’s the office, the studio where reports are produced and sent to each other, it’s the bed for sleeping at night. While they are doing an interview in this region impoverished by the latent conflict, this forgotten war that the Russian mobilization on the border has brought back to the headlines, our two journalists are targeted by shellfire. The first flies over them and falls further. They run away.

As they start the car, a second hits the field, 200 yards to their right, then after starting, a third 50 yards behind them. The couple they were interrogating shouted: “Run, Run Away”. But the scare passed, and after analyzing the situation, the shells did not appear to be loaded and seemed to be fired by the Ukrainian army, as if to incite civilians to leave the area. No certainty yet. Our reporters have withdrawn.

Bombs, tank fire, flames, charred carcasses, ruins, blood, bodies, tears, fear, fleeing life. East runs to West. These people, with whom Thibault, Jérémy, Valentin, Arthur shared a moment over a coffee or a meal, these people they saw living, for the most part, in the European way, these people who worked, these basins of students, all that stops with the first sirens and the noise of the bombs not far from Kiev, the noise of the armament everywhere.

In a panic, leave everything, pack a suitcase, do not scare the children. Thus testifies this Ukrainian at the microphone of Valentin Dunate, this mother must find a suitable narration, while calming her anxieties, and leaving her home behind her, to propel herself on the roads, with two suitcases. Like relatives, friends, neighbors.

And on the networks, the images of flames, red hot iron, violent words. All this violence fell on the lives of Ukrainians. It’s not even time to understand what is irrational, the first reflex is to survive, not to think.

It’s war, and it’s not far from us. Omar Ouahmane and Gilles Gallinaro touched her closely. Leaving Paris on Monday, February 21 by car, they took 27 hours to reach Ukraine; 27 hours only by road, which is to say that it is there, on our doorstep, and for this reason, while calculating the risks, the reporters continue their mission to inform, live, not very far from the place where the bombs fall.