Reuters World News - Special anniversary episode: The Ukraine war

Episode Date: February 24, 2023

Reuters has been on the frontlines of the war for a year. We speak with our reporters on the ground. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A year ago today, Kiev jolted awake to the sounds of distant explosions. From that moment, Ukraine has been torn apart by war. Moments like these at Kiev Station, all too common. Every day on Reuters World News, we bring you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes. And we've been on those front lines in Ukraine for the past year, bearing witness to a war that has touched us all. For me, photography is also about heart. You can make people feel it.

You have to feel it first to make people feel it. We're there as the war shows no sign of abating. A reminder of the ferocity of the fighting. This thick metal shredded like paper. And we'll continue to tell the story of whatever is next in this conflict. It's the most serious bet that a Russian leader is taken since at least the fall of the Soviet Union. You can't just walk off into the sun.

set, right? It has to stay in charge. That would be the argument of people within the Kremlin, that you don't just walk away from something like this. I'm Kim Vinal in London. I'm Zora Ben Samaraj based in the car. I'm Mike Collett White in Kiev, Ukraine. I'm Guy Falkenbridge in Moscow. Convierte your passion in a business with Shopify and bathe records of ventas with the form of Pago with a better conversion of the world. Has heard it been, the Meregernation of the world. The incredible system of

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Your business will be a super-exitpo with Shopify. Empecia to a period of a month in Shopify.es bar records. On February 24th, 22, Vladimir Putin announced a special

military operation. But the Russian president's hopes for an early victory were derailed. Forces in Kiev pushed back hard. On the outskirts of the capital in Butcher, the fighting was intense. The results were witnessed by our journalists, and one Reuters' image shocked the world. It was of a woman's hand, a civilian. Though she was splattered with mud, her painted red nails are striking. Irene Filkina was 52, and it's believed she was killed on March 5th. A year on, her sister, Svetlana Sofanova, trudges through the snow to lay red roses on Irene's grave. She told Reuters her world ended on the day her sister died.

And that she had struggled, unable to find Irene's body to lay her to rest. Irene was identified thanks to the Reuters' photo. The beautician who painted those nails red, Anastasia Subativa, is now a refugee in Vilnius, Lithuania. Anastasia says she froze when the image appeared on her Instagram feed. Reuters, Zohra bin Seema, took the photo. My colleagues told us that Butcha was liberated. When I arrived there, there were nothing shocking about people queuing to get food, the supplies.

Then my colleagues were with me, came back and said, Zora, someone told us about the street full of bodies, you know. So we decided to go to the street, and when you see it, and I was not expecting, to be honest, I was not expecting to see a lot of bodies on the street, lying on the street. Like, we start walking. You see the first one, and then you see this again, and you see the third, and you see the fourth, and you see. And it was like, well, I can't hide when, even if it was really shocking and a graphic, I had to take pictures. And for me, it was we have to publish them. It's important.

They are civilians. They are not soldiers. And this is what I do. And I mean, but sometimes I cried because if Idoria, that means you are not human. Zohra bin Sima there on covering the aftermath of the massacre in Boucher Boucher lay on the Russians' path to the prized city of Kiev, a prize they never took. A year on, Mike Collette White walks the streets to see what's changed in the capital.

Walking around Kiev, it's sometimes easy to forget that this is the capital city of a country at war. And then you stumble across shocking reminders of what has been happening and what is happening across the country. particularly in the east and the south. In front of me is a wall of thousands of photographs of mainly young and middle-aged men who have been killed in fighting against the Russians

and their proxies all the way back to 2014. I think beneath the veneer of calm across much of Kiev, there is anxiety. For example, the schools have closed for the next three days. Pupils are learning online only because authorities fear the Russians may mark the first anniversary of the invasion with more missiles and drone attacks. And longer term, I also think people worry that President Volodymya Zelensky,

who has been instrumental in winning aid and military help from overseas, may struggle to keep that interest from abroad and sustain the fight against the Russians. He remains incredibly popular. The trust in him is something like 70 or 80 percent, according to polls, but can he keep the money flowing to help him and his forces resist a much bigger army? I might call it white in Kiev, Ukraine. There isn't an end point in sight, not without a pretty major vault face from Vladimir Putin. I spoke to our Russia bureau chief, Guy Falkenbridge, about how likely that is. Guy, a year into this war, where does Putin stand now?

So Putin went into this war. He bet on this war a year ago, and he bet on a quick war. That hasn't actually happened. So Putin is now dealing with a much longer war, a war that has put Russia's economy under serious pressure, and a war that has essentially changed Russia's foreign policy beyond all expectation. Russia is now turning much more to China, away from the West, away from Europe. And so Putin, to an extent, some in the elite really don't like this war. Some do like the war. But Putin himself is going to remain in power, at least for the foreseeable future, because you can't just leave at this sort of time, right?

So Putin is not threatened by anybody else. There are no rivals in Russia. And he's showing absolutely no sign of wanting to slow down or exit this conflict. Putin is not showing any signs of wanting to stop this conflict. the opposite. Putin is saying to the world, I am going to grind on until I get what I want in Ukraine and I don't care what you say will do about that. And frankly, I don't have a lot to lose. What about the China factor here? Talk me through that. So China is super important to this. In the West, you have the NATO military alliance supporting Ukraine.

Russia is fighting against Ukraine and by consequence the West. If China got a lot of involved in a much deeper way, that would essentially escalate this conflict to a much more global conflict, to a much more sort of world war type situation, because you'd have on the one side, China and Russia, against Ukraine and the West. And that's the sort of thing that gets people extremely worried. Thank you so much, Guy Falkenbridge. This week, Joe Biden marked the one-year anniversary with an unannounced visit to Kiev that was to underline his support for Ukraine. But will that support from the US and other Western allies continue? Is there a fear of Ukraine fatigue?

Rachel Armstrong is Reuters Europe news editor. When we look back at the past year, there's not a facet of our coverage globally that hasn't been changed by the war. That's obviously true in terms of geopolitics, security, economics, corporate news. But even in the sporting and entertainment worlds that the war has had a massive impact on the types of stories that we've been doing, As we go into the second year of coverage, I think from a political perspective, we'll probably be looking a little bit less the direct conflict between Russia, Ukraine, but even more at the global geopolitical backdrop that it's taking place against.

This week, we've got German Chancellor Olaf Schultz going to India. He's already been to Latin America as well this year. Those are trips he wouldn't have thought about doing 18 months ago when he came into office. He's doing them now because there is going to be a big battle between the West and Russia for influence amongst the other major emerging market economies in the world. Meanwhile, all eyes are on the relationship between Russia and China and how Beijing is going to align itself in the long term over this conflict. In Europe, we've almost made it through the winter. Everyone's bills have gone up dramatically, but actually the energy hasn't run out in the outlook. look for how that's going to go into next winter is also looking a lot better than it was before.

In Ukraine, I think we'll be looking a lot more at the return of politics. I don't think Zelensky will carry on having such little opposition to what he's doing. And I think at a global level, it'll be a lot more about old school global diplomacy and the fallout from that. I'm Rachel Armstrong, Europe News Editor in London. I was on the ground in eastern Ukraine at what was looking back the very start of this war. I felt then, and I do now, much the same as Zohra does, who we heard from earlier. War shocks you, and it stays with you, and it should. That's it for this special edition of Reuters World News.

We'll be back on Monday. In the meantime, you can find more trusted news at Reuters.com.