under fire from Kharkiv

On Tuesday March 1, 2022, in Kharkiv, Ukraine, five days after the start of the invasion of the country, as the Russians attacked the palace of the regional administration, where the protection of civilians was organized, a reporting team from TF1-LCI was inside. The great reporter Michel Scott filmed everything.

Already it was necessary to enter the besieged Kharkiv. Then find a place to spend the night. This building, the headquarters of the region administration is the only option. Right in the center, it is here that the civil defense is organized, not the army, but the civilians who defend the neighborhoods and roundabouts in the city.

But the TF1-LCI team has no choice. They must at least spend a night here. After reporting on the modus operandi of the groups that organize themselves in the building, Michel Scott, Guillaume Aguerre and Alexandre Gaudin sleep on the 4th floor, on the interior courtyard side. It’s 8 o’clock in the morning, Alexandre and Guillaume go down to have a coffee or get something to eat. Michel prepares the day of reporting which promises to be intense when an explosion is heard. A compression of air, a breath that physically affects. It’s a Russian missile fired at the facade of the building.

In the back, Michel is unharmed, and immediately goes in search of Guillaume and Alex, quickly reassured by the fixer and the driver who assure him that his two cameramen are fine. Going down the floors in search of them, while filming with his phone, Michel Scott becomes aware of the damage. Everything was blown up by the explosion. No window held. There are wounded and everything is destroyed.

Michel finds his team and begins to want to work, but a second explosion, not from the front, but on the structure, gives the impression of the ceiling collapsing. Thick black dust that prevents breathing. It is no longer a question of reporting, security and survival mode become the priorities. Michel Scott takes refuge in the basements, not knowing if there will be another strike or if soldiers on the ground will orchestrate an attack on the building with artillery. After two endless hours, the team will find a way out.

The basement shelter, Michel Scott knew it well 48 hours earlier. The journalist uses the word “surface” which implies, by contrast, an underground life. On the surface, there is no one left when the war comes to your neighborhood, the bombardments, the shootings. And when the noise gets closer, the reflex is therefore to flee or to bury oneself.

We talk a lot about people who take the roads of exile, but there are even more of them, from Mariupol to Kharkiv, who stay here, for a host of good reasons that concern only them. So since we can’t leave, and nowhere to take refuge, we take the few personal belongings that are expensive, and we go to live in the cellar.

In a town in Dombass, deserted on its surface, Michel Scott’s team comes across a group of people near a school. They do nothing except breathe the air and a few minutes of peace. Journalists are well received, they are always well received, where no one goes, leaving the feeling to those who live there, that they have been abandoned to their sad fate.

“Come see, come down with us”. Michel recovers, saying at the microphone of franceinfo that he then discovers an underground city. No, it’s not exactly that, he corrects, but when you look at the images of hundreds of people crammed into galleries as far as the eye can see, you say to yourself that the notion of an underground city is not not totally exaggerated.

From these ephemeral encounters are woven human bonds of great intensity, and it is not easy to leave leaving all that behind. This is the whole difficulty of the reporting profession. The priority of priorities is to tell the war. If we are blocked in an area where nothing is happening, blocked in a place by soldiers or militiamen, if we take the posture of the combatant, if we only think of staying with the besieged populations, then we away from the mission of information. A vital mission not to let the propaganda of the belligerents operate.

Michel Scott had to leave Kharkiv, and it was not easy, but from the outside, he can continue to tell what is at stake there. He has kept in contact with the militiamen, with civilians encountered there who want to fight, he will recount their fight, whereas in the dust of the ruins, it would be impossible for him to work and document the intensity of this war. Food is becoming scarce. Food, petrol, everything becomes a shortage.

Risk measurement is also a sensitive thread. Tightrope walker. Need to inform and security. If the photographer does not spend the end of his nose to capture the image of the reality of the trenches, the shot will never be taken. Take a step forward, then back, enter, exit, while remaining focused. Know what is “safe”, and what is not. War crushes certainties. Kharkiv Palace, precisely, was one of the most “safe” of the city, Monday, February 28. On Tuesday morning, it became a remnant of the war.