On the ground of a war

In the saturation of information on the war in Ukraine since February 24, there are more things left unsaid that say a lot than you think. And they are often worn by journalists who live the pressure and the horror of this war. With beyond the harshness of the testimonies collected, the fear to manage when the bombs fall all around.

To look at the titles of the drop-down banners, to read the press releases, “Russian army withdraws from Kherson”, we would end up forgetting that this war in Ukraine is terribly deadly, and that the dead, mostly soldiers, are invisible. In the columns of the newspaper The world this summer, Rémy Ourdan wrote:

“If the world has seen the bombardments of Mariupol and Izium, the executions of Boutcha and Irpin, it does not see that a generation of young men is sinking. The carnage can be heard from the sirens of the ambulances rushing down the roads of Donbass, it can be seen from the vans bearing the number 200 (military code for the transport of corpses), it can be understood from the frightened faces of the fighters who have already lost a quarter , a third, half of their unit, of their brothers in arms and who generally refuse to talk about it. The carnage can be read on social networks, which over the months have become endless obituary pages, a sanctuary of combatant memory.

If the world does not see it, Ukraine and Russia experience it in the pain of the families who recover the bodies days later, sometimes what is left of them. In the towns and villages where everything may seem calm on the surface, except that the social fabric is dislocated, and that ruins here and there remind us of the proximity of the front lines, we try to live a daily life as normally as possible, in managing his fear and the vagaries of bad luck, if a bomb were to land on his building.

It is by ear, by judgement, that we interrupt or not the activities of the moment. Like a thunderstorm, we try to assess by the power of the noise whether the cloud of missiles is approaching or moving away. When it hits very hard, we rush into cellars and shelters, when the impression remains that the mortars remain at a distance, we remain focused on what we are doing in the neighborhood or near our hand.

Sometimes there can be an illusion of normality. Like any illusion, it is necessarily deceptive. Just like the feeling of familiarity experienced war reporters can have when they return for the fifth or sixth time. Danger is never visible and vigilance is always required.

In this Profession Reporter, Omar Ouahmane, senior reporter for the international editorial staff of Radio France and Jérémie Tuil, reporting technician, both experienced and connoisseurs of Ukrainian terrain – the fourth mission on the spot since the start of the war in February – both recognized that the reports of October were particularly difficult. As seen from France, the feeling emanated, of a war diminishing in intensity. But a war remains a war, the bombs remain the bombs and zero risk exists even less in such situations.

And fears always arise in so-called innocuous periods. Omar and Jeremy drive in convoy in their vehicle, but the car gets stuck and forces the Radio France team to get out of the car to free the wheel. The convoy continues. A few minutes later, in the distance in front of smoke screens, the convoy was shelled. If they hadn’t been bogged down…

At the end of a day of reporting, have a quick dinner and edit the reports in Jérémie’s room. A huge sudden explosion, then two. The walls are shaking, window panes shattered outside. The two reporters rush first to the bathroom, then to the basement where the other tenants are already holed up. This management of the danger and the fear that the Ukrainians experience on a daily basis, it is told little with regard to the horrors that the conflict propagates, and yet, it is a major point which tires, exhausts, dislocates, reduces the human being, and who ends up killing him one way or another.