Ideas - Conflicted: a Ukrainian journalist covers her nation at war

Episode Date: March 27, 2024

“We face a continual tension between holding the government to account, and not wanting the enemy to undermine us by exploiting bad news," says Ukrainian journalist Veronika Melkozerova. She delivered this year's Peter Stursberg Foreign Correspondents Lecture, focusing her talk on what Ukrainian journalists confront daily: patriotism versus journalism.

Hey there, I'm David Common. If you're like me, there are things you love about living in the GTA and things that drive you absolutely crazy. Every day on This Is Toronto, we connect you to what matters most about life in the GTA, the news you gotta know, and the conversations your friends will be talking about. Whether you listen on a run through your neighbourhood, or while sitting in the parking lot that is the 401, check out This Is Toronto, wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayyad.

Doing good, solid journalism can be demanding, and it should be. But it's even more demanding in a war zone. Actually, I'm not a war reporter, and I never wanted to be one. Veronica Melchizarova is a journalist based in Kiev. But when war comes into your country, you kind of have no choice. Veronica delivered the 2023 Peter Sturzberg Foreign Correspondence Lecture. As a journalist, she understands the dilemma that thousands of Ukrainians faced, whether to stay in the country or to flee.

But we as reporters are faced with another kind of dilemma, undermining our own country at war, by which I mean reporting on our own corrupt officials. That tension between journalism and patriotism was the focus of Veronika Melchizerova's talk. She was originally supposed to travel to Ottawa to deliver it in person, but visa issues got in the way.

So she recorded herself at home for an online audience. That was in January, just one month before Russia's invasion of Ukraine was about to enter its third year. Russia's war against Ukraine actually started in 2014, not in 2022. At first was a new type of invasion, a hybrid invasion, because Russia annexed Crimean Peninsula, a Ukrainian sovereign territory, and fueled pro-Russian uprisings in Ukraine's region of Donbass, which basically takes Ukraine's east and Ukraine's south. So Russia responded in a colonial power kind of way. If we want to be independent really from

Russia, we must lose the territory. We must pay for daring. Their tactics of the hybrid warfare against us was deny and it didn't happen it meant more than actual effects actually and this approach worked well not only for russia but for the rest of the world unfortunately everyone kept doing business with russia as usual including Ukraine, the Kremlin got no serious punishment for redrawing borders of Europe by force, so in 2022 it returned for more. My career in journalism started right after Russia invaded my country for the first time in 2014. But back then, only the Ukrainian media called this an invasion, while the rest of the

world preferred other kind of description of what was going on, even though Igor Strelkov and many other top so-called separatists had Russian citizenship and even worked for Russian security services. And the regular Russian army blocked Ukrainian forces in the military bases in Crimea. I changed newsrooms and soon started working as a freelance producer and writer with many top US media outlets. And I tried to describe things the way they were. So I called separatists Russian-backed militants to clarify their Ukrainian and Russian origin and the fact that they were getting money from the Kremlin to fight against internationally recognized Ukrainian government. However, I was heavily edited. Russia does not admit it supports them, so we can't call them Russian, one of my editors told me back then.

Editors also had the ongoing discussion on how to describe what was going on in Ukraine. Was it a civil war, a conflict, or a hybrid invasion? And they usually chose the vaguest definition of them all. Conflict in Ukraine or Ukraine crisis. As if it was some kind of an internal argument or civil conflict and not the ongoing international war, where the official Ukrainian government was trying to counter Russian-sponsored and Russian-directed militant groups, which were trying to take control over a certain part of the country to then attach it to Russia, which is exactly what they did in 2022.

Before the full-scale invasion, nothing was certain and everything was possible, just like Russia always wants it to be. Ironically, this approach allowed the Kremlin to justify its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The Kremlin used its special coverage of Ukrainian Nazi problem, together with the vague definition of war published by many Western media back then, to claim that we were a failed state that must be denazified. As a former freelance writer, I can tell you that there was a time between 2019 and 2021 when the only story you could actually sell from Ukraine was either about corruption or about Azov, a Ukrainian volunteer battalion formed from mostly Russian-speaking

football hooligans and far-right nationalists in 2014 in response to the first Russian aggression. Azov was later taken under our government's control, it was in 2015, and incorporated as a part of Ukrainian National Guard, reformed. But, of course, back then the details of why they appeared in the first place and what were they fighting against were not that interesting. Ukraine was labeled a low-interest country, and our war was at some point labeled a forgotten war. So all people knew about Ukraine before 2022 was corruption and Azov, usually written by foreign reporters parachuting into the country for a week to write about Ukraine's far-right problem through the lens of America or Europe. So all most of people knew about my country

was that we're sort of the same as Russia, but not as cool and mysterious, though everyone did discover that we elected a comedian as president in 2019. At the same time, Russia was way more active, pushing the corrupt Nazi Ukraine narrative and in constant denial of its military and financial involvement in the war in Ukraine. These were its main tools to prepare for and justify its full-scale invasion. Western media was at that time uninterested in actual Ukraine story, usually covering it from Moscow as a sideline topic. So we Ukrainians were habitually outmaneuvered by Russia. Now let me take you to February 2022.

It was the month when United States and other Western intelligence services were screaming about the upcoming Russian invasion. Airlines, embassies were leaving Ukraine. But our leadership were blaming everyone for being hysterical and denied the prospects that Russia would actually dare to invade us. But then February 24 happened. We woke up at 4 a.m. as Russians were barring us with missiles, their troops attacking us from the east, north and south. Most international teams understandably fled Ukraine or at least moved to safer places just like thousands of Ukrainians. I remember one news host of a very influential primetime show on an American TV channel reporting from the border with Poland. His colleagues were praising his courage because he was so close to the war zone.

Meanwhile, I was taking part in the same TV show via Zoom from Kyiv, where Russian forces were trying to destroy a power plant in my district. And I was like, well, OK. Veronica Melchizarova has covered the Russian invasion widely for Ukrainian and Western media. The BBC, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Atlantic Magazine, and the website Politico. And while she understands why many Ukrainians decided to flee the country, she was committed to remaining in Kyiv throughout the Russian onslaught. When the Kyiv region was under siege, many foreign media finally started asking us, Ukrainians, to speak about and for ourselves. They were doing it largely because of safety concerns

for their own journalists, but that still helped us to tell our own story and to show that Ukraine was actually full of people who did not consider themselves Russian and had rich history and culture of their own, as well as national identity Russians aimed to erase. Foreign media used Ukrainian reporters and even started giving us bylines in the stories. Previously, Ukrainian journalists were mostly helping Western reporters as producers or fixers. Once in 2019, a Wall Street Journal reporter told me that I should

be grateful just for the opportunity to work for such a reputable publication, even though they were paying me peanuts. But the full-scale invasion changed the situation drastically. me peanuts. But the full-scale invasion changed the situation drastically. Nobody knew how the events would unfold. Within days, Russians occupied some 20% of our territory. Experts predicted that Kyiv would fall in a week. With some exceptions, international news teams were afraid to report from Kyiv. So it was then when we got our voice in the media. From window in my grandma's apartment on the 14th floor, I watched lines and lines of cars heading west every day as lonely Ukrainian tanks and military trucks were rushing in the opposite direction. However, not everyone fled. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians stayed in their hometowns and villages, organizing resistance and joining the army or becoming military volunteers delivering essentials to the front. President

Volodymyr Zelensky also stayed, as well as key members of the government. Ukraine demonstrated to the whole world that it was ready to fight the unprovoked invasion. As Kyiv was under siege, the city was full of fear, but it was also full of happy moments, unity and incredible feeling of community. Those who weren't fighting were delivering aid or weapons while others were patrolling or searching for food and supplies on the nearly empty store shelves. There were no vacancies in our territorial defense forces. We helped pregnant women who were giving birth in bomb shelters in Kyiv. And we also reported what was happening to us, speaking to

the world daily, tweeting, posting videos. We showed our nation's fight against this violent invasion 24-7. This invasion whose aim was to erase those of us who refused to turn into Russians. We understood that denazification really was about destroying Ukrainian nation and the world finally started seeing things the way they were. We seemed perfect back then as a nation, a pure survivor and fighter. Media coverage was largely the same, factual. Now the storyline was Ukraine was attacked, it defends itself against bigger, stronger aggressor, who came to rob, kill and rape, so we must help Ukraine. It now seemed that all the narratives about Ukraine's corruption and its

ultra-nationalist groups were forgotten and even ceased to exist for a while. groups were forgotten and even ceased to exist for a while. Meanwhile, Russian propaganda was still very much alive, focusing on all the negativity, past feuds and conflicts it could find to undermine Western support for Ukraine. However, people's compassion towards the actual victim proved stronger. Even Poland forgot past feuds and turned into one of Ukraine's strongest allies back then. Kiev seemed to have won the propaganda war in 2022. Our media coverage also helped to make that happen. Ukrainian and Western journalists in the first months focused more on covering Russian bombings, war crimes, and Ukraine's struggle to take back the occupied territories and save its people.

And in fact, that is still what's going on today. Yes, Ukrainian journalists may seem reflexively biased. However, while our Western colleagues positioned themselves above this story with their balanced, standard, both sides say, coverage, we were inside this story, much more into the context of things. So besides providing information on who said what, we also explained what that actually meant. And that helped many people to understand that Russia's invasion of Ukraine was based on lies and imperialist ambitions. Soon, more and more newsrooms around the world were also dropping their obscure and timid language in their war coverage and were no longer afraid to call black black and white white.

and were no longer afraid to call black black and white white. However, the longer the war continued, the harder it became to keep supporting Ukraine. Compassion means aid, and aid means incredible financial burden. And yes, morality dictates it's still the right things to do. But one's own problems are always closer to home. So to keep supporting the victim in these circumstances, the victim must remain perfect. And that's of course impossible. In the Russian media, we're trying our best to show how far Ukraine was from being a perfect victim. Flooding mainstream media and social media with fake stories, orchestrated videos, disinformation and whataboutism.

Nowadays, a fake post is all it takes. Because of news saturation, people are more likely to fall for fake news and probably won't even care to read a debunking article. It was at this point in her talk that Veronica Melchizarova arrived at the heart of the dilemma that she and other Ukrainian journalists confront every day. Patriotism versus journalism. Let me give you an example. As soon as Russians were forced to withdraw from Kyiv, some of Ukraine's officials reverted back to business as usual, stealing on state procurements at times when Ukraine was begging for foreign financial and

military support. What do you do when vital support depends on you being worth it? And every critical story exposing defense sector corruption or backtracking of anti-corruption reform or rising influence and control of president's office on every process of the state during war will be used by your attacker to cement the message. See, Ukraine is a failed state. It is not democratic, therefore it's not worthy. Every flaw, every negative story would be amplified and used to undermine Ukraine, which had already been weakened by war. So, should I write that critical article now? Is this even the right time to write something like that? These were the questions and still are the questions most Ukrainian and I think foreign

journalists keep asking themselves over the past two years. And it seems that Ukraine's dependence on Western aid has a lot of conditions. Ukraine must be flawless, Ukraine must reform itself during wartime. And now we are told that we should still conduct elections even when Russians are attacking crowded areas all over the country. During martial law the government has every right to postpone elections and control information that is coming out of Ukraine. And every government, including the Ukrainian one, uses those powers. We now have all the biggest and most popular TV channels united into one telethon, pushing one common narrative 24-7. Is it normal? During times of war, unfortunately, it is. However, besides fighting for existence, we're also a democracy, so we have to stay democratic.

And democracy means power of the people to control and criticize their government and institutions, even when at war. But the scale of Russia's war is so intense that we, journalists, gave our officials a pass. During the first six months, we focused our efforts on reporting numerous Russian war crimes in Ukraine, those committed in Bucha, or Kherson, or Mariupol. We hoped our officials would focus on protecting our country, and that included protecting us from corruption that might undermine our chances to win the war against Russia. However, this is not what we got from our government. Instead, corruption continued, followed by gaslighting, unjustified denials of access, and getting ghosted for reporting about it. As soon as we saw that a lack of reporting gives the green light to steal from a nation at war,

while everyone else is distracted by Russia's atrocities, we understood that we need to act. In the long run, the ongoing corruption was and still is weakening Ukraine. Indeed, Ukraine's enemies and Russia's friends all around the world used our reporting against our country's public image. At the same time, we finally saw positive changes at home. The defense minister was ousted, the corruption fight renewed, and several high-profile corrupt officials and oligarchs came under increased scrutiny. The bureaucracy that slowed down supplying the war front was simplified.

However, many foreign officials, including those in the US Republican Party or Slovakian Prime Minister, started using our reporting to show why it was necessary to stop sending money to us. We got our corrupt Ukraine image back at exactly the time when we needed crucial support more than ever. It was as if we were just getting aid for no reason, not for fighting the genocidal invasion on our own. I am shocked how easy it is for Russia to normalize its self-styled right to barrage Ukraine's cities and towns with missiles. Everyone forgets so quickly. In 2023, nobody already talks about Ukraine's gigantic successes, as well as why Ukraine refused to negotiate with Russia.

Think of Bucha, the killing, raping and mutilating of civilians, the annexation of the occupied territories and the bombing of ports. In May 2023, we in Kiev slept for just a week as Russia was shelling the capital with cruise missiles, even used the Kinzhal hypersonic missile, which was created to destroy aircraft carriers in the sea. We survived the winter of blackouts. We endured 20% of our economy getting destroyed. And yet, we managed to keep our institutions running, as well as even raise money for our own state

budget. But we don't hear about that. What we do hear are stories that our counteroffensive brings no results, even with all the Western weapons we've got. Russia is too strong, the story goes. However the reports about Russia also getting military aid, getting more and more help from the global south and China are not as popular. Not to mention reports of numerous European-based companies still selling and reselling western parts to Russia's military, as well as buying Russian natural resources, and by doing all that, financing Russia's war against us.

And by doing all that, financing Russia's war against us. Yet I have no regrets. We remained committed to practicing fair and professional journalism and covering corruption on our own side during wartime. Even though Volodymyr Zelensky reportedly even asked some journalists not to do it until the end of war. But Ukrainian journalists responded that if they were to do that, the war might never end. Thank you so much. and a broadcast heard on CBC Radio 1 in Canada, on U.S. Public Radio, across North America on Sirius XM,

in Australia on ABC Radio National, and around the world at cbc.ca slash ideas. Find us on the CBC Listen app and wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nala Ayyad. Hey there, I'm Kathleen Goltar, and I have a confession to make. I am a true Ayyad. Hey there, I'm Kathleen Goltar, and I have a confession to make. I am a true crime fanatic.

I devour books and films and, most of all, true crime podcasts. But sometimes, I just want to know more. I want to go deeper. And that's where my podcast, Crime Story, comes in. Every week, I go behind the scenes with the creators of the best in true crime. I chat with the host of Scamanda, Teacher's Pet, Bone Valley, the list goes on. For the insider scoop, find Crime Story in your podcast app. Veronica Melchizarova delivered the Peter Sturzberg Foreign Correspondents Lecture in January.

In February, the month when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, I spoke with Veronica as she recorded herself at home in Kiev. Let me start here. Just a few days ago, the third year of this war, Russia's war in Ukraine, started. I'm just wondering how you're doing. it's a very good question I am doing okay I guess in comparison to many other Ukrainians that suffered so much because of this war only this weekend

Russia killed 5 kids and 12 overall people in Odessa just with one drone however I haven't seen this story in many Western media, and it seems that the attention fades away, that now Gaza is the conflict that everyone tracks and everyone cares about, while Ukraine has become sort of forgotten by the general public, unfortunately. Your whole lecture that you delivered, the Sturzberg lecture,

was framed with a tension between patriotism on one hand and journalism on the other. Russia is at war with your country, and yet your job is to cover that war. When has that tension between patriotism and journalism been at its strongest for you? I think in the end of 2023, because I noticed that our affair reporting about corruption during war, about our problems during war, that made us seem not such a perfect victim, has become a weapon in hands of those who wanted and still want Ukraine to fall. Many radical politicians who suppress freedom of speech in their own countries, who destroy opposition, who take control over the media at home, like Viktor Orban in Hungary, starting saying, hey, look, Ukraine is corrupt. Look, Ukraine is controlling information during war. That means

Ukraine is not worth helping. And people who generally got tired of helping yet another country at war started searching for excuse. And that has become, surprisingly for me, an excuse to start calling for less aid or no aid to Ukraine. And I think that that led to delays because it has become a part of political game, domestic one in many countries. And each delay causes yet another village destroyed by Russia, yet another war crime, yet another shelling of a peaceful Ukrainian city or town.

And people generally seem not to care anymore about human lives. They look the other way. It's really quite shocking. But to be a perfect victim, I just want to get a sense of the scale of that demand. Who's looking for Ukraine to be a perfect victim? I think that our allies who support us, they know that you cannot be a perfect victim. But forces in those allied countries, they are different. forces in those allied countries, they are different. And now we have like a year of 50 or so election, like all over the world, elections all over the world.

And different forces, mostly radical forces, mostly right-wing conservatives, some of whom usually are pretty friendly with the Kremlin or even took money from the Kremlin like Marine Le Pen in France they started using flows of Ukraine like corruption like lack of free information flow from Ukraine during war because our government is trying to censor journalists

working at the front by controlling what are they doing there, for example. This is all being used to attract people from the other side, from the other camp at home, like, for example, voters who usually support Ukraine, just to show them, look, it's not worth it. Like, a couple of days ago, I saw a video from Trump rally somewhere in Texas where a woman got asked, why do you support Trump? He's, like, very friendly with Russia, and Russia is bombing Ukraine, killing dozens and dozens of people. And the woman answered with a smile, I don't care. Ukraine is corrupt. Putin is not our enemy. And that blew my mind, how a person can think like that.

I saw the same clip. I had a similar reaction. On the other hand, another theme that kind of runs through your lecture, you say you have no regrets about the way you and your colleagues have practiced journalism throughout the war. What's the single most powerful experience you've had as a journalist that makes you have no regrets? Do you have no regrets? It's hard to... I think the story about Ukraine's stolen children has become one of those experiences that showed me that even though it's very hard and becomes harder to make people abroad hear you. When I saw a girl who returned from Russia, a Russian-controlled territory of Ukraine I got my Lisa, I got my Lisa back. And her reaction, her smile, she was so tired. They traveled for two days. Russians forced them to pose for this. We're so grateful to Russia. Videos that they like to film there just to show to Russian domestic

audience and maybe some of the supporters abroad that Russia is actually saving those children from Ukrainian Nazis. So they usually force people to film these thank you videos if they want to leave Russia with their children. Propaganda, basically. Yeah, so it's basically my biggest achievement was to just tell the story of this mother and this daughter and other children that were not returned, unfortunately. It was a glimmer in a very dark story. Yes. I prefer to focus on more positive things right now because that's the only way to keep your head sane nowadays. your head saying nowadays. A big part of the story, Veronica, has been propaganda and disinformation, and certainly a significant part of Russia's war in Ukraine from the start.

And a large part of it, of course, has been playing out online. You recently decided to quit the platform X or Twitter because of the harassment you endured on that platform. Can you tell me about that moment when you decided that you could no longer be on that platform? It just isn't worth it. I think it was last year and possibly in spring or so. It was a post that showed Ukrainian refugees entering a plane somewhere in Europe. And the person said that they are not real refugees because they had good clothes and they had suitcases

that that person said he or she couldn't afford. And I went to the profile of that person and it was not a real person. It was a bot. But Musk's ex got it, like, several dozen thousands of shares, lots of likes. It was amplified. Yeah, it was amplified, like, a lot. While Ukrainian posts there are frequently being silenced or deleted. And I think that we live in a world where a billionaire can just buy a biggest social media platform that was really good back in the day.

And helped Ukrainians in the first months of war just to when media didn't know what would happen here we all turned into sort of small media or reporters just broadcasting what was happening 24 7 and it managed to help us to gather this support and then uh mask fired all the content monitoring team, and made this platform like heaven for conservatives, radicals, bots, and pro-Russian forces. And there were numerous other times when Musk was genuinely harassing Zelensky and other stuff without any punishment. Yes. And you mentioned the example of the woman at the Trump rally. I mean, how successful do you think some of this has been in the U.S.? I think it was really successful. I think that radicals understood that they can abuse the freedom of speech and turn it into a weapon. Even Tucker Carlson's interview with Putin, it was like everyone was discussing how ridiculous was it, like the interview.

But I noticed the segment that he had after the interview, how good life in Russia is. So he went to the supermarket and was advertising a card that you have like plans. He was at the grocery store and looking at the bread. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He presented it as if like, see how good life in Russia is. We would spend $400 on the same amount of food in the US, and here it's only $100. And no mentioning that salaries in Russia are much smaller, and they cannot afford even that $100 grocery shopping there. And people still buy it. Tucker's interview with Putin was

seen by millions and millions of viewers. It was posted on Twitter. And then Fox went to the front line and interviewed Zelensky. And that interview had like only something like 200k views or so. Is it a lost cause on social media, do you think? I think it's a lost cause for us journalists. I think that the fact that we thought that truth and facts and lots of words will force people to think and will force them to analyze how they're being used by politicians. I think that it's no longer like a case when you have social media platforms like X, where Tucker Carlson is getting like, he's getting a lot of traction and attention for total bullshit, and nobody's questioning him. for total bullshit, and nobody's questioning him.

I'm curious if there are any Russian journalists that you trust or follow, or whether you know any at all. I think that there are two of them that I can read, which is Novaya Gazeta Europe, and also iStories Media. Are they in Russia? They are mostly relocated to Europe, but they have some sources in Russia. But they must work in this creed as almost spies, because honest journalism will not survive in Russia. Just look at what happened to Navalny's funeral and how they treated the dead body of an oppositioner as if it's like

a nuclear weapon or so. The people were arrested just for laying flowers. His mother was bullied saying that you should agree for non-public funeral ceremony or we will bury him as a dog somewhere in prison, on the territory of the prison. So this is Russia. Do you ever think about what it's like to be a journalist in Russia? I mean, as you say, it's incredibly dangerous to actually report the truth. What are they supposed to do? I think they were supposed to build democratic society in Russia, just like we did in Ukraine. We were working, generations of Ukrainians were working and fighting, sometimes in bloody revolutions.

in the bloody revolutions. We had like three big revolutions since 1991 trying to beat this mafia mob rule style that was coming to us from Russia. These former Soviet directors and KGB agents trying to, you know, hop on a new democratic republic. What was the role of a journalist in that? The role of a journalist was to make people see, because in Soviet Union, TV was always right. You always heard only one version of events, which was strictly crafted by state propaganda. which was strictly crafted by state propaganda. There is even a joke about how only Pravda newspaper knew what was going on in Soviet Union,

and everything was fine in Soviet Union. It was surrounded by enemies, but it was the best country in the world, with the best food in the world, and all people were happy and all people were friends with each other. Brothers. Yeah. Which we all know wasn't true with all the gulags and imprisoned oppositioners like Solzhenitsyn and others. So do you think Russian journalists could be doing more? Of course they could be doing more.

They were stronger at some point in the 1990s. They were teaching us how to do journalism. But at the same time, many of them were posing as oppositioners, like Alexei Venediktov, who's a famous radio host in Russia. He was posing as this Putin critic, and at the same time, he was behind the curtains, pretty friendly with Kremlin. Even Alexei Navalny used to say that Ukraine lives worse than Russia

because corruption is bigger in Ukraine, while the Kremlin towers are controlling all the oligarchs in Russia and makes them work for the government. Right. And those who are truly critics of Putin get killed. Yes. We're in the last third of this interview, so we'll just push through. Actually, before I get there, let me just ask you, is there such a thing as Ukrainian propaganda?

Of course there is. What does it look like? And then it was this rapid counteroffensive because Kremlin didn't expect that we would be so resilient, that we would all unite and stand firm, even with the fact that we didn't have much help from the West in the first two months. So Kremlin was not prepared for such a scale of war. And that helped us a lot. That helped us in the first year. That helped us together support because people saw we were stronger than they think. But our officials, unfortunately, hop on the success wave and started saying like, we're going to be in Crimea in 2023. It's going to all end with Ukraine's victory.

We're going to take all our territories back. Kremlin is so weak. See, it was the second largest army in the world, and we almost beat it. Of course, it was all done to cheer the nation up, to make us want to fight even stronger. cheer the nation up, to make us want to fight even stronger. But it's been two years and we're still there. We are losing right now at the war front because it seems that Russia is pretty strong. Russia managed to get North Korea, Iran, and some other countries helping it, helping it to avoid sanctions. Is there anyone in Ukraine who buys that propaganda?

I think not anymore. I think it was at this stage. I think it was like that. But then people started asking questions. I even once in Irpin, when I was reporting about the destroyed housing there, how people were struggling to rebuild, one woman told me that when it all started, they decided to stay in Irpin, which is Kiev region, which suffered a lot, which took basically all the Russian rage that was supposed to get into Kiev. that was supposed to get into Kyiv.

They said that they decided to stay and not evacuate because they believed one of presidential advisors, Alexei Restorovich, who was saying back then that it will all last only for two weeks or so, and then Russians will leave. Wow, two weeks. Yeah. Now it's been more than two years. Yeah. And currently Alexei Ristovich is hiding from Ukrainians abroad in New York, criticizing President Zelensky and

saying it's basically he's worse than Putin. I want to go back for the ending of our chat to what we started with, this whole issue of patriotism versus journalism. You've talked about sort of this dilemma of reporting on corruption inside Ukraine while Ukraine is at war, and you talked about what the outside world thinks about that. Can you talk about the reaction you got inside of Ukraine when you wrote about corruption at this time of war?

I think people generally support journalists in Ukraine that still have good reputation because there was a time in the first days of war when any kind of criticism of Ukrainian government was treated as if you were working for Russia. And honestly, some of officials in the Ukrainian government are still trying to portray any kind of criticism against them as if like working for the enemy or undermining Ukraine when it's weak. Yeah, you're either with us or against us. We are at war we have priorities but ukrainians they have pretty strong civil society and we have the sense that russians don't have

that your government is supposed to serve your interest not the other way around. And Ukrainians control the government. And the public wanted justice. The public wanted to know why corruption is still going on when soldiers need everything, why there are officials still stealing when we ask for aid abroad. How can we do this? And I think that when I saw this reaction among Ukrainians, I understood that this is a real patriotism, that you know what is best for your country. And you know that in the long run, corruption weakens Ukraine. And if we do not do anything with it domestically, if we don't control our government, the war might never end. So the pointing out the weaknesses is an act of patriotism as a journalist, is what you're saying? Yes, because then the weaknesses can be spotted by the general public that will

force officials to do something with it. And we got it. We got it. We now have a very strong team in the defense ministry, finally, that is doing audit. For example, just recently, they posted themselves, not even the journalist, the defense ministry posted that the audit showed more than 30,000 tourniquets, very good ones, were just there laying in the storage of the defense ministry without being distributed to soldiers for some reason. soldiers for some reason. At times when soldiers are dying and they had pretty bad problems with cheap tourniquets from China that were supplied to the front lines and the defense ministry reported it and fixed the problem. Have you ever felt pressure from anyone like from family or colleagues or even yourself, to not tell the truth about situations like this? I don't know if it was pressure. It was mostly gaslighting from some officials. Gaslighting?

Yeah. like some of my sources in high cabinets they were saying like why do you have to tell about this now we are just like trying to get aid and it's very hard to get aid why do you keep like spoiling our chances and I'm saying it's not me who keeps spoiling your chances but your own officials who are doing that. So do something not with me, but with those officials and you will get your result. Given, as you mentioned, the softening of American support for Ukraine and the prospect that Donald Trump could be the next U.S. president. What, if anything, do you think journalism, especially about the war in Ukraine, should be doing differently? I don't know, honestly. I think I'm not a person to answer such global questions. I just sometimes think that seeing how propaganda works,

seeing how disinformation works, how they trigger mostly emotions. It's like a lightning. You just throw something in there just to trigger people. Like a proverbial grenade. Yeah, like this. You just have to do it. And then we have to come, we have to show up, write long, boring explanations that nobody will care to read. Or if some will, they might not read farther than two paragraphs. I think that we have to adapt and become a little bit like bad guys that we're fighting. We should be more emotional, probably. But it will violate rules that we all stick. So, I don't.

I hear a sense of exasperation as you explain that. Yeah, yeah. Maybe even exhaustion. Maybe it is. I don't know. But you've been at this, you know, for many years. And since you've been through, you know, since February, or actually since 2014, you've been at this when Russia annexed Crimea. Do you think that journalism can have an impact?

That's, well, actually, I'll just leave it there. Do you think journalism can have an impact? I think there is still hope because if my story manages to change at least somebody's mind, I think it's already a small victory. It's not only me, but thousands of other journalists like me who are still sticking to the rules of the profession and trying to do what Tucker Carlson said once that we should all do, inform the public of what is happening. I'm joking because he didn't do it, but we are doing that. I think that there is still hope and we still have to keep fighting. That's the only way, just like Ukraine keeps fighting, because otherwise everything will be much, much worse. You finished your lecture and you mentioned earlier that by saying that if Ukrainian

journalists don't tell the truth about both Russian and Ukrainian wrongdoing, then the war may never end. And that makes me wonder, is the kind of journalism you believe in and that you continue to practice, is it a kind of war itself, a war that never has an end? I think it is a kind of a war for minds because it's a key thing, actually. First, you go and you, like Russians did with us, first they go in and they divide you. Whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, you're no longer able to cooperate like you did for ages, even though you have different values in many ways.

You've become mortal enemies that cannot find any common ground. That's what I saw when I was in the US. That's how I understood everything is very dangerous there and for the world too. is very dangerous there and for the world too. I think in Canada you also might have some divisions that seems to be like people cannot make peace with each other. They just think that it's no longer just the political view, it's an enemy. So that's how Russia acted in Ukraine we were always one nation speaking different languages but then Russia came and started saying that if you speak Ukrainian you must hate Russian if you want a Ukrainian to be the only state language in Ukraine, just to make it more widespread than Russian in Ukraine, you are a Nazi. And that kept like fueling, fueling until it became a war that was instigated. Russia first

was doing it in discreet way, even denying that those people in uniforms in Crimea in 2014, they were Russian soldiers from the bases of the... The men in green. Yeah, the men in green. Then was Donbass and the Russian spring that was fueled by Surkov from Russia. Still, they were denying it. And the whole world was like, well, if Russia denies it, that means it must be internal conflict.

And then whenians understood they cannot longer control our minds they need to invade and that's what happened in 2022 so the first war goes for minds and then goes war for territory where do you think you are in this war of minds at what stage i think just like ukrainian soldiers right now at the war front i am outgunned and outnumbered because when you're at war and your border is blockaded by allies whole like whole lot of emotions are fueling people to do things that were unimaginable, just to spoil food, spill grain, just for the sake of the performance. You cannot do much.

You just have to scream into the void, just trying to hope for the best that some people can hear you and change their minds. Other than that, I think evil forces for now have more resources and they're more united than democratic ones, unfortunately. Veronica, given all of that, I cannot thank you enough, not only for the lecture that you delivered, but for giving us yet more time and recording it for us to get your screaming into the void onto our airwaves. A really heartfelt thank you.

Thank you so much. You were listening to Journalism vs. Patriotism with Ukrainian journalist Veronica Melchizerova, who delivered this year's Peter Sturzberg Foreign Correspondents Lecture. This episode was produced by Greg Kelly. Thank you to Carleton University and to Alan Thompson, head of the journalism program there. Technical production, Danielle Duval. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso. Acting senior producer, Lisa Godfrey. The executive producer of Ideas is Greg Kelly.

And I'm Nala Ayed. Thank you.