VIDEO. Is it possible for France Télévisions to produce free information in Ukraine?

Maryse Burgot is a senior reporter at France Télévisions, she has carried out several long missions in Ukraine to cover the war between it and Russia. What are his working and filming conditions on site? Do the country’s authorities allow him to work freely? “I tend to answer yes, although of course it is a country at war. And when there is war, there is inevitably propaganda. There is propaganda on both sides. Russian side and Ukrainian side.”

Maryse Burgot thus speaks of a “daily struggle” For “try to shoot what we want to show and not just what the Ukrainians want to show us.” How ? “We spend a lot of time negotiating with press officers, commanders, battalions to go to this or that front lineshe explains. [Pour] talking about losses in the number of deaths, which is a taboo subject. [Pour] talking about the number of injured, a very taboo subject too.”

“It’s a negotiation, it’s a fight.”

Maryse Burgot, senior reporter at France Télévisions

at franceinfo

Maryse Burgot then takes as an example the day she “lost [sa] Ukrainian press card” to get “disobeyed the military authorities of this country”. “They didn’t want us to go to the city of Kherson, which had just been liberated by the Ukrainians, she says. The authorities wanted us to go there, but only the next day, because the next day Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was coming to the city of Kherson and the authorities wanted him to be surrounded by a swarm of journalists.”

“I wanted to go there the same day, because it was on that day that Kherson was liberated. So I moved forward with my team, with other colleagues. We all lost our press cards .”

Maryse Burgot, senior reporter at France Télévisions

at franceinfo

This loss of Ukrainian press card was temporary. “We ended up recovering it, arguing that it was information and that we needed this information”concludes Maryse Burgot.