Fresh Air - Life & Death In A Ukrainian War Zone

Episode Date: November 13, 2023

We go inside the first days of Russia's invasion of Ukraine with journalist Mstyslav Chernov. He and his team were the only international journalists to spend the first 20 days covering the siege of the city of Mariupol. "I just understood that we need to record everything. Every frame, every second."A new PBS FRONTLINE documentary features their images — the constant shelling of the city, mass graves, and graphic images of women and children who are suffering and dying. Chernov is a video journalist for the Associated Press. He and his team won a Pulitzer Prize for their work in Mariupol.Later, Maureen Corrigan reviews a new short story collection by Claire Keegan.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. Throughout history, from Vietnam to the latest conflict in Israel and Gaza, visual images of conflict can offer unparalleled perspectives of the grim brutalities of war. A gripping new documentary takes us to the first days of the war in Ukraine, inside the city of Mariupol, where a team of Ukrainian journalists with the Associated Press captured some of the most harrowing and defining images of the first days of war, from the bombing of a maternity hospital to mass graves and dying children. The team has produced a new film based on those images, called 20 Days in Mariupol.

February 24, 2022. The city looks normal. Someone once told me, wars don't start with explosions, they start with silence. When we realized that the invasion was imminent, our team decided to go to Mariupol. We were sure it would be one of the main targets. But we could never imagine the scale and that the whole country would be under attack. One of the journalists who captured those images

is Ukrainian video journalist and filmmaker Mstislav Chernov. He's covered many conflicts over his career, including the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution, the war in the Donbass region of Ukraine, the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, the Syrian civil war, and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Mstislav Chernov and his team have also won several awards for their coverage of Mariupol, including a 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. 20 Days in Mariupol premieres on PBS Frontline on Tuesday, November 21st. And Mstislav Chernov, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you. As we've heard, you and your team were aware in those first days leading up to the invasion in 2022 that something was going to happen in Mariupol.

How did you know that region would probably feel the greatest impact in those first days? of Ukrainians and for many journalists who've been covering Ukraine since 2014, this war, this Russian invasion has started in 2014. And for me as a conflict journalist, my work have started from there. And for many Ukrainian journalists too, we just became conflict journalists, cameramen, photographers, writers. We all became war journalists. And that was our new reality. And for all these years, I've been covering also other conflicts for Associated Press, but I was always coming back to Ukraine and to the front lines and kept trying to bring attention to ongoing conflict. And we knew that Mariupol is significant, symbolic, and tactically important for Russia

because it's just on the way to Crimea. Yeah, and we didn't know what's going to be the scale of the invasion. But in any case, Mariupol would be the big target for them. That's why we have decided to go there. You know, Russia claimed in those early days that they were not targeting civilians. You were there, and your images defy that narrative, which really shows these very graphic images

of mostly women and children who are suffering and dying. And we later learned that more than 25,000 civilians were killed. 95% of the city was destroyed. Can you describe what that felt like in reality? It's very personal. It's very, very personal for all of us. I grew up in Kharkiv, and Kharkiv is a similar city to culturally and visually even similar to Mariupol. So being there and seeing city indiscriminately destroyed and

women and children and men, everyone being killed and their homes being destroyed was just psychologically devastating. And it was definitely the most dangerous experience I've had throughout these years of different wars. But it was crucial at that point that we focus on the human toll on the on on the effect that that these attack this invasion is is having on the civilians exactly because russia kept claiming that they are not targeting civilians that they're targeting only military objects which was clearly not the case and we did expect that because just knowing how russia performed uh trying to take uh grozny in the past and then aleppo i've been in aleppo i i know how it was and so we did expect that they will be shooting at the city, but honestly, we did not expect it's going to be so brutal. No one did.

Can you talk briefly about the decision to focus on those 20 days? It seems like a very deliberate choice. There was no context before or after. We were literally dropped in Mariupol over that span of time. Yeah, that was a conscious choice to focus on 20 days, on this short span of time, and to narrow the vision to everything that happened within those days. Because it lasted much longer than that. It lasted much longer, of course. But I thought that to show how it really was, to bring the audience as close as possible to experience which people of Mariupol lived through,

we need to focus on these 20 days and to show how it is to be trapped in the city, which is sliding down to chaos. And how is it to be scared of whether you wake up alive next day or not? Can you paint a picture for us of the chaos that you were experiencing there? A lot of that chaos is in the film, but there are still a lot of moments which are just impossible to capture because visually nothing happens. But when bombs, when you just lie down on the floor of the hospital at night and bombs are falling around the hospital

and when all the patients that are in these corridors, because people wouldn't sleep in wards, they would just sleep on the floor of the corridors of the hospital. All people in pain, because there were just very, very little painkillers left. And they would suffer and they would mourn and they would whisper to each other and they would call for nurses but then there was just one nurse which couldn't even sleep and she couldn't ease these people's pain. And so you constantly hear and feel and smell the pain and the hunger that comes with the siege. People gathering water, people gathering snow outside

and running in their shelters just to melt the snow into the water. People scrambling for food in looted shops. But at the same time, there would be someone with a guitar and he or she would just sit and play and sing and suddenly everything is transformed and people gather and they're again full of hope and full of life. So there's this always emotional roller coaster of hope and desperation of chaos and silence

and it goes up and down and just never stops. And you want it to stop and you desperately want it to stop, but it just doesn't. In the film, there are these moments where you're filming and people are yelling at you to stop filming or they're saying, why are you filming?

And you say over and over again, I'm documenting history. This is history. It's journalism because your images also then went out into you were documenting was something that could be used later in time to understand just understood that we need to record everything. Every frame, every second will be invaluable later for the war crimes investigations, for history of Ukraine, and also journalistically important right in the moment. So everything had to be recorded, and i did my best to do that although sometimes i had just to hide and stop recording because the moments were too hard or people i was filming needed support but most of the people we met in mariupol and further the siege progressed more tragedies unfolded more people were just coming to us and saying please keep filming please keep sending these images because the world has to know world has to stop what is happening here so i did and there were few who said don't film me and you don't see them in a film there were those who

wanted to express aggression or who wanted to express different opinions from the majority of other people and they did and it's also in a film so those people it was very important for us when we edited and we uh we we covered it as news and when we edited as a film it was very important editorially to show variety of reactions of of people who are trapped in this in, in this siege, and to show the panic and confusion. And I think that's the big... This confusion is also a part of another big theme that you see in the film, a theme of misinformation and misinterpretation and what it does to people. When the city was deprived of any communication, it led people to panic.

It destroys the society. Apparently, the absence of information is much more devastating for our society than the absence of food and water. Because you had no way of knowing how your images were being used, what the world knew about what you were actually seeing. Were you even aware in those moments that you and your team were the only ones sending these images?

Because you knew that you weren't seeing other journalists, but that isolation that you're talking about, did you feel it too? We did, but we had short moments of connection when we actually were able sometimes to send images. And it was sometimes a day or two days after they were filmed. And therefore, only in those moments when I could speak to editors, I could see that the images that I've sent maybe four and five days ago were making impact. And I was seeing that nothing else is being published from Mariupol. And of course, editors also were telling us that apparently there is no one else reporting. Now we know that a Lithuanian, a great Lithuanian filmmaker was as well in Mariupol at the same time with us filming.

He wasn't sending anything and he tried to escape. His name is Manta Skridaravicius and he was trying to escape the same way we did, but slightly later through Russian checkpoints. And unfortunately, he was captured and executed. One of the hardest parts to watch in this documentary is of this four-year-old girl being treated on a gurney in a hospital. And as doctors are working on her, feverishly trying to keep her alive, one of the doctors is saying to you over and over, keep filming, don't stop, show Putin the eyes of this child. This is one of the first images the Associated Press actually released to broadcasters, which then was shown around the world. Let's listen to some of the reporting that happened along with your images.

U.S. officials warn that Russian forces are turning to their old and brutal tactics of laying siege to cities while targeting civilians and infrastructure from afar. These punishing artillery and airstrikes, heavy losses as indiscriminate shelling rained down on apartment buildings, the university in flames. Show this to Putin, a doctor said to an AP reporter. The doctor wanted Vladimir Putin to see, quote, the eyes of this child and crying doctors. Anyone wanting to leave Mariupol probably has to hit the road by tomorrow, after which the last route out is expected to close. That was a clip from the new PBS Frontline documentary, 20 Days in Mariupol. Mstislav, this is what you're talking about. These images that you were able to capture,

followed by the different ways that the narrative was told around those images. That four-year-old girl died right there in front of you. Yeah. And not only that girl. After all of the medics leave, your camera lingers. It is a very haunting image. Everyone has left the room, and there is just the girl on the gurney, and it's you. Can you take me to that day? This is a very hard question okay so I think doctors have fought for the life of Evangelina for a very long time much, that actually they needed to,

but they just couldn't believe that they cannot save her. And when they've accepted that fact, and when they told the mother, everyone left the room because no one could, everyone was so shocked because no one could look. Everyone felt so devastated. And yeah, I remained for a few seconds in the room to make one final shot to remember. And there are just a few names in the film that appear, and these are the names of children who died. And I just want these names to be remembered.

How do you prepare yourself to see such things? What is inside of you that keeps you focused and strong to keep rolling? You don't. You can't prepare yourself for that. I don't think any normal human being can prepare yourself for that. But also, your feelings and you you know that at the moment and your feelings are at that moment are absolutely irrelevant because that's parents who who are hit the hardest i can can only imagine how that feels. And I wish that no one ever feels that.

I think it's the biggest tragedy in the world, a loss of a child's life. And no one should experience that ever. Our guest today is Ukrainian video journalist and filmmaker Mstislav Chernov, talking with us about his new film, 20 Days in Mariupol. We'll be right back. I'm T receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply. I'm Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Baldonado, here with a secret from our archives.

Sometimes during interviews, Terry almost sings. Now, as we'll hear, one of the things you do on this record is your famous, I can't, I can't even imitate this. To hear Terry with Ronnie Spector, you'll have to be a Fresh Air Plus supporter. Join for yourself at plus.npr.org. Today, my guest is Associated Press video journalist and filmmaker Mstislav Chernov. He's covered many conflicts around the world, including the Ukrainian Revolution of 2014, the war in the Donbass region of Ukraine, the downing of Malaysia Flight 17, the Syrian Civil War, and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Chernoff and his team have won several awards for their coverage at the start of the Ukrainian-Russian War,

including a 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. A documentary of his work, 20 Days in Mariupol, premieres on PBS Frontline on Tuesday, November 21st. You know, I was thinking, Mr. Slav, as well, when I was watching this very powerful documentary that, you know, we have these journalistic principles that are supposed to be this line between the subjects that we are covering and ourselves. And the journalistic integrity in many ways is murky in these instances because you're also a human being. What is your philosophy when you have a personal and emotional stake in the story? How do you make the calculation of when to stop filming and to actually help? That is a decision which you have to take in the very, very beginning of your conflict journalism career

because inevitably you're facing situations when people need help. And I think it's quite a simple and clear rule if a person needs help and if there is no one competent nearby to help them you drop your camera and you just help if there is a competent person to to assist a person in need then you keep filming and you keep filming everything because you never know what's going to be important. And especially when people are suffering

in the places where human rights could be violated, when the war crimes or possible war crimes are happening, you have to film everything, just everything. Then you decide what to publish. There is also a duty, a public duty to make sure that these tragedies are seen by the world. So, yeah, again, it's a hard balance. It's a hard balance, but it's important.

Was there ever a moment when you were in Mariupol where you did have to put down your camera and stop and help yeah many many moments like that when we lived in the hospital for a while so sometimes we would just carry food for doctors still had some food left and they were sharing it with patients of course and we were just like carrying food sometimes we needed to help carry gurneys because there were not enough personnel and elevators didn't work obviously so we just carried gurneys with with injured people we were part we were part of this community and we are part of this community. And I think it's a very simple decision. It does seem when you step back, when you think that, oh, well, journalists cannot be involved and take sides.

But in this specific case, we, and I do agree with that. I do agree with the thought that journalists should never become activists and because that's a dangerous path when they are becoming weapons of someone else's interests. But at the same time, it doesn't mean we need to stop to be humans. Ukrainians, as you mentioned, that identity is so strong, the community, the sense of self. And from the very start, there was a message, a pouring out from the Ukrainian people of see us, see our humanity. There's this part in this film where you're talking to a police officer named Vladimir about what he wants the international community to know about the war. And he first gives his message in Ukrainian and then he gives it in English. Let's listen. The name of the police officer speaking to us is Vladimir. He wants to make a statement.

And then he asks once more. Russian troops commit war crimes. Our family, our women, our children need help. Our people need help from international society. Please, help Mariupol. That was a police officer named Vladimir featured in the new documentary about the early days of the war in Ukraine called 20 Days in Mariupol. Mr. Slav, there was an outpour of support early on, but now here in the States, there is this battle within Congress over allocating additional funding to help fund this war. We know that current President Biden is an

ally, but some presidential candidates who are running, they're actually running on this campaign of saying that if they're elected, they will cut funding off to your country. You're traveling the country and still doing work. On the day-to-day level, on the ground level, in practical ways, does it still feel like the support from the world is there? Yeah, it definitely feels that support is there. And I think even with what is happening right now in Israel and Gaza, there is an understanding, there is bigger understanding in the world that these conflicts are connected and that they concern everyone. That every country somehow will be in future part of that.

But I think there is an understanding, there is a mutual understanding between all Ukrainians that however big or small the support is from the world, they will not stop fighting. And that's, I think, that some of the politicians in many countries don't understand. This misconception is widely supported by Russian propaganda as well the thought that if you stop giving weapons to Ukraine somehow the war stops and everything will resolve itself but the truth is that Ukrainians are fighting and that's what they feel. They are fighting for their existence.

They know what happens to cities when they get occupied by Russians. And they know that if they retreat, what will happen to them? They will be killed, tortured. So it's a fight for the survival. And it doesn't matter how many weapons will be sent to Ukraine. It doesn't matter because Ukrainians will keep fighting. That's what they are prepared for. Less weapons will just mean there will be more victims among the civilian population and on the front line among the soldiers. That's what they tell me when I ask them what they feel about the support at my stop. They say we will not stop fighting.

Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guest is award-winning video journalist and filmmaker Mstislav Chernov. Chernov and his team were the only international journalists to spend the first 20 days of the war in Ukraine in the city of Mariupol. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is Fresh Air. When and how did you and your team get out of Mariupol? It was a day 20. And the green corridor was just negotiated and open, although it was not clear whether it's going to hold or not,

whether it's official or not, whether people who are living through this green corridor will be shot at or not but thousands of cars would leave in the city and this was we we knew that this was our chance because there was still very much chaos on on the russian checkpoints we knew that security protocols and all the lists of people who they're looking for were not established yet they still haven't been checking the phones or you know the identities of people who were leaving the city and we took our chance so vladimir used his personal car and risked safety of his own family to take us out of the city with thousands of other people. And we joined this convoys.

And we were so lucky to get through 15 Russian checkpoints within the occupied territory. So if you think about it now, it feels like a very hopeless idea. But because there was such a chaos, we had a good chance. And then we were lucky that by the night time, basically the time we were just too dangerous to cross the front line or just to stay somewhere in the field, we reached a Red Cross convoy. We caught up with these Red Cross cars and we just went in this convoy and that saved us through the hardest part of the trip.

And there was a plan if we don't escape, then we would probably need to go to Azovstal and to remain there because there was still some connection there. But yeah, it was not a very good option. You're from Kharkiv, which had its own battle from February to May of 2022. What is your hometown like now? After leaving Mariupol, I went to Bucha. And then I asked editors to send me to Kharkiv because it was under attack and there was a chance he could have been surrounded.

And I wanted to go to my hometown to tell its story. And so I went. And it was such a difficult time because we already started editing 20 days in Mariupol. We already started to go in through all the footage and discussions, how we will build a narrative, how we approach these tragedies. And we found and I filmed a lot of follow-up stories with families, with doctors. So Mariupol was very much still there in my mind and in my heart. And at the same time during the day, well, actually during the morning, every 4 a.m., a big rocket would hit Kharkiv somewhere.

And usually that's when you start working and trying to find where it hit, if that hit civilians. And so you would work through the whole day and just trying to again survive, and there were civilian victims every single day, and it was like a deja vu. And then I would just come back to to my home and then I will start I would start editing and looking at what happened in Mariupol

so it was very challenging time very challenging time one day I received an address from emergency services where the shelling hit the residential area and I drove there. I just put it in my phone and I drove there and I realized that that was the house where I lived as a student for five years. And there were just three people killed right in front of that house. And all those memories from being a child and then being a student came back to me. And this scene, broken windows and mutilated bodies were right on the top of it and it was all like a nightmare leaking into reality but actually a nightmare you just can't wake up from. That is something that I really want to talk about

in my next film. How this invasion takes away our childhood memories, takes away our places that live peacefully in our memories and just turns them into dust and ruins. That is something I will definitely address in my next film. Do you even sit still long enough to think about your own mortality? Wow, that is a deep question. I am, I have to tell you the truth, I am really afraid of death and of pain. But then again, we are not presented with much choice right now.

And since I have chosen this profession, I have chosen to challenge myself and my fears, then I will stick to that decision for as long as I can. Wow, Mr. Slav, it just is, it's like then you're facing your fear every day. Aren't we all in some way? Maybe not to this extent. Well, I can speak only for myself. I don't know.

I guess everyone makes their own choices. Yeah. And that's what I can tell you for sure, is that sometimes people don't know what they are capable of. I've seen people who thought they're so brave and they're capable of everything, but then when they're presented with a difficult choice, whether to risk their lives and do something and just save their lives, run for their lives, and they would choose to run.

And those people who I would never expect it to be brave and to be standing their ground until the very end, they do it. And it even surprises them. So there is a moment in 20 Days in Mariupol, in the film, when I say that war is like an x-ray. That's what one of the doctors told me in the hospital. War is like an x-ray. Good people become better, bad people become worse.

So the war shows our true nature. And again, I'm sure there is a better way for that. I'm sure there is a better way to understand our own nature. But that's the reality. We live in the war zone. Mr. Slav Chernoff, thank you so much for this conversation. Thank you.

Mr. Slav Chernoff is a video journalist and filmmaker. His new documentary, 20 Days in Mariupol, premieres on PBS Frontline on Tuesday, November 21st. The film will also stream on YouTube, Frontline's website, in the PBS app, and on the PBS Documentary's Prime video channel. Coming up, Maureen Corrigan reviews a new short story collection. This is Fresh Air. Critics and fellow writers have used terms like one of the greatest and perfect to refer to Claire Keegan and her writing.

Our book critic Maureen Corrigan says the only flaw she sees with Keegan's work is that there isn't enough of it. Here's her review of So Late in the Day, a newly published collection of three of Keegan's short stories. Claire Keegan's newly published short story collection, So Late in the Day, contains three tales that testify to the screwed up relations between women and men. To give you a hint about Keegan's views on who's to blame for that situation, be aware that when the title story was published in France earlier this year. It was called Misogynie. In that story, a Dublin office worker named Cahal is feeling the minutes drag by on a Friday afternoon. Something about the situation soon begins to seem off. Cahal's boss comes over and urges him to call it a day. Cahal absentmindedly neglects to save the budget file he's been working on. He refrains from checking his messages on the bus

ride home because, as we're told, he found he wasn't ready, then wondered if anyone ever was ready for what was difficult or painful. Cahal eventually returns to his empty house and thinks about his fiancée, who's moved out. On first reading, we think, poor guy, he's numb because he's been dumped. On rereading, and Keegan is the kind of writer whose spare slippery work you want to reread. Maybe we think differently. Keegan's sentences shapeshift the second time around, twisting themselves into a more emotionally complicated story. Listen, for instance, to her brief description of how Cahal's bus ride home ends. At the stop for Jack White's Inn, a young woman came down the aisle and sat in the vacated seat across from him.

He sat breathing in her scent until it occurred to him that there must be thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of women who smelled the same. Perhaps Cahal is clumsily trying to console himself. Perhaps, though, the French were on to something in entitling this story Misogynie. It's evident from the arrangement of this collection that Keegan's nuanced, suggestive style is one she's achieved over the years. The three short stories in So Late in the Day appear in reverse chronological order, so that the last story, Antarctica, is the oldest, first published in 1999. It's far from an obvious tale, but there's a definite foreboding woman-in-peril vibe going on throughout Antarctica. In contrast, the central story of this collection,

called The Long and Painful Death, which was originally published in 2007, is a pensive masterpiece about male anger towards successful women and the female impulse to placate that anger. Our unnamed heroine, a writer, has been awarded a precious two weeks residency at the isolated Heinrich Boll house on Atchell Island, a real place on Ireland's west coast. She arrives at the house exhausted and falls asleep on the couch. Keegan writes that when she woke, she felt the tail end of a dream, a feeling like silk disappearing. The house phone starts ringing and the writer reluctantly answers it. A man who identifies himself as a professor of German literature says he's standing right outside and that he's gotten permission to tour the house. Our writer, like many women, needs more work on her personal boundaries.

She puts off this unwanted visitor until evening, but she's not strong enough to refuse him altogether. After she puts the phone down, we're told that what had begun as a fine day was still a fine day, but had changed. Now that she had fixed a time, the day in some way was obliged to proceed in the direction of the Germans coming. She spends valuable writing time making a cake for her guest, who, when he arrives, turns out to be a man with a healthy face and angry blue eyes. He mentions something about how many people want to come here, many, many applications. I am lucky I know, murmurs our writer. The professor is that tiresome kind of guest who could neither create conversation nor be content to have none. That is, until he reveals himself to be a raging green-eyed monster of an academic. This story is the only one of the three that has what I'd consider to be a happy ending. But maybe upon rereading, I'll find still another tone

lurking in Keegan's magnificently simple, resonant sentences. Maureen Corrigan is a professor of literature at Georgetown University. She reviewed So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, how much influence does Fox News have now? We talk with media reporter Brian Stelter. He's written his second book about Fox called Network of Lies, the epic saga of Fox News, Donald Trump, and the battle for American democracy. It's about Fox and the days and years after January 6th. I hope you can join us. To keep up with what's on the show and to get highlights of our interviews,

follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Sallet, Phyllis Myers, Sam Brigger, Lorne Krenzel, Heidi Saman, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Teresa Madden, Thea Chaloner, Seth Kelly, and Susan Yakundi. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. For Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley.