creates a new complication. so this is, you know, literally impenetrable. so we just have to, again, not like any addict, we have to acknowledge the problem. right. and the is that law, we can't create a government better people law actually can't save us from. democracy only works if you actually give people authority that goes with the responsibility not to do whatever they want. they can still be checks and balances. that's important, but use their best judgment. and we don't have a system that allows that and is causing havoc in our society. on that dreary note i, want to congratulate you on the book and thank thank you for telling.

hello, everyone. good evening. thanks for making it through a rainy wednesday night in new york city. my name is bill grueskin i'm a professor here at the journalism school, former editor at, among other places, wall street journal. we want to welcome you to this discussion about one grievous events of the first century the war on ukraine. we're very honored to host your profile trofimov, who's the chief foreign correspondent, the wall street journal and the author of this fantastic new are our our enemies will vanish the russian invasion and ukraine's for independence. as you can see there are there are books for sale in the rear. so be able to grab one and i think you'll be signing books for that. right. okay, great. just a quick word. tonight's event is co-sponsored by two organizations. one is the simon and john lee center for global journalism at

the j school. it's mission is to inform the way we practice journalism through an international lens. the other organization is the overseas press of america, which is the nation's largest and oldest association of journalists, are engaged in international news. i'll say a few words about the folks on the panel and let them take it away. yaroslav has a background that. you would need a team of about five screenwriters to come up with. he was born in kiev, grew up in madagascar sort of briefly the soviet army fortunately didn't stay in there too long. got her degree from nyu only because he was a few days late, applying to columbia journalism school, and then he has freelanced in and then he freelance in ukraine france in the middle east before joining bloomberg news in italy. he came to the wall street journal in 1999, which is where i first got to meet him. and since he's taken on some of the world's most challenging

assignments covering wars and other conflicts in iraq, pakistan, libya, yemen somalia, liberia, as well as and palestine. he returned to his native ukraine in early 2022, just few weeks before the russian invasion. and as you'll see from his book, from his comments tonight, traveled as far as anyone, possibly could to uncover stories that no one else has told. yaroslav will be interviewed tonight. osma khan, who joined us on the phone as full time journalism faculty member three years ago, just shortly before she won the pulitzer prize for international reporting that prizes for her series the new york times the civilian casualty files, which was the culmination of more five years of reporting, including investigation, insights in iraq, syria and afghanistan, as well as more than 1300 military records that obtained in legal battles with the pentagon asma

and yaroslav. we'll chat for around 45 minutes, after which we'll take questions at that mic from. the audience when that comes, we ask that you keep your questions succinct and anybody whose by saying this is more a comment than a question will find themselves traveling through a trap door and on the sidewalk at 116th broadway. finally, let me just say this is also a moment when we can think york, one of yaroslavl most gifted colleagues at the wall street journal, evan herskovitz he remains in rose in a russian prison nearly a year. he was unjustly arrested on false espionage charges. we very much hope to host him someday soon at the same podium at columbia journalism school. thank you very much. and turn it over to these two. thank you. yaroslav, it's such an honor to be here with you. this is such an extraordinary

book. i was thinking about all of the different ways in which this book provides its value from, the ways in which it's an intimate and raw portrayal of conflict reporting, the ways in which you bring your depth of experience and many other conflict zones. to this lens, the very sharp geopolitical analysis and history with beautiful storytelling. not to mention your own personal experiences as somebody who is from ukraine covering a war that's happening in, your homeland. and i want to delve more into how that has shaped your reporting in just a moment. but i'd love to back it up for our audience and just learn a little more about how you grew up and in ukraine and your own journey towards journalism. so just going to show us. one image in just a second. me see, i can do it manually.

no, but tell us about how you grew up. yeah. so thank you so much for this. wonderful introduction. i was born in kiev in ukraine and when was a child i went to madagascar because my father was teaching there at the university. so i learned french as my, i guess, second, third language and then i thought i would be a painter. so this is me in art class with some visiting revolutionaries i think from algeria at the time. and by going to an art school, i of lucked to be in the one part of the ukrainian educational system in the soviet times that wasn't ratified and wasn't. i was keen on preserving what remained ukrainian cultural identity. after all this decades of assimilation and after the executions of the ukrainian

cultural elite in the thirties and forties and so, so when ukraine became independent and when the ukrainians started thinking about independence at in the final days, the soviet union, obviously that was something that was very close to my heart. and i was actually a leader of the strike committee of my university. uh, was easy to get students to strike because, you know, what else are they going to do? and, but after initially studying in ukraine, i, i came to new york, i went to grad school here and i really wanted to do other stories because there's always this trap in if you start writing about your own country somewhere far away, sort of pigeonhole you as, as a local hire, as a stringer and, and so i tried to get away as far as possible and write about the middle east, right? write about europe and after i joined the journal in the

previous century, it so happened 911. i happened to be one of the few people on staff who, spoke some arabic. and so i started traveling, you know, across the middle east. and i spent a lot of time in iraq and. that other photo ahead of me over there is actually me standing on baghdad's main square and the saddam statue was. yeah, and behind that soldier is, the kind of whatever remains of saddam's statue used to stand. and i did. i made two previous books were about the middle east and covering the middle east. and then in afghanistan for, five years, you know what you do in these areas you do conflict reporting. so there was a lot of stories and a lot of shelling and bombing and, uh, and dodging bullets. and i remember in 2004, after a particularly hard year in the iraq war, so many friends were

kidnaped, killed, you know, that was the blow up the the red cross. they blew up the the u.n. building ukraine had a revolution in ukraine. there was an unfair election. and people came out in the streets and protested and peacefully without single window broken, without a single person hurt, they achieved major change. you know, the election was canceled. it was a new round. and was i remember being very proud at the time thinking, well, you know, my people they really know how to do things. but that was before russia intervened officially was ukrainians against ukrainians. and then i went back, uh, again and in 2014 there was another popular movement against. uh, increasingly authoritarian, uh, president who wanted to bring away from its, uh aspirations to turn westward

into an alliance with russia. and then russia intervened. and so war broke out in donbas, uh, because of russian proxies and direct russian involvement. and when i think about now, but, and nobody paid much attention and the world just watched and let it happen. but 14,000 people died at the time. yeah. in few short months and and you know this was a different situation. and so again, sort of coming back to the middle east, i spent much 2021 in kabul because i had to come back after after having run our bureau there and we had an obligation to nearly 100 people who used to work for us. and their family members, uh, to evacuate them and, uh, ukraine was along with one of only two countries that actually said yes, you know, we'll take them in and a great many of our journalists ended up in kiev that summer. but also remember how in on the.

on august 14th, 2021, president ashraf ghani went to the ramparts kabul proclaimed we will fight to the very end. and the next morning. by noon he was going on a helicopter to abu dhabi and the taliban were in my hotel. and so when i was in kiev a few months later, i had this nagging fear in the back of my head that this saying would happen in kiev and president lansky would also listen to advice from the likes of boris johnson, other western leaders and leave. yeah, i couldn't write. i want actually just take us to a beginning scene in your book. um, so it's february third, 2022 before this invasion and you go to a meeting with president former president poroshenko who calls you for an interview and he describes some changes political, changes that are happening, unity that, you know, was not possible in the months

preceding this. and when you switch off your and you shake his hand, he leans, lowers his voice. what does he tell you and what's going through your mind? yeah. so there was an interview that was supposed to happen many days later and all of a sudden i've got a call saying, come, now's the time. and former president poroshenko, you know, he was and remains a very bitter political rival of president zelensky. uh, and yet in those days, he said that correctly, that if you look at ukrainian history in the past several centuries, every time that the ukrainian state collapsed, it was because of infighting. it was the case in the 17th century. it was case in 1919, 1920. and also the previous pro-western government came into power after for pretty much was undone because of between the president, the prime minister. and they came to me and said you know, we know the war will be tomorrow at dawn. so you still have time to go to the airport and get out.

he was giving you like an early warning. he's saying, yes, i am exact. make a run for it, if you like. exactly and i think many people did make the run and the fear in kiev and especially uh, i think the conviction, in washington, many other western capitals in moscow was that ukraine had no chance that ukraine would collapse in a matter of days. the russia with this overwhelming will just come in and crash and the by then had shut down the embassy in kiev uh, withdrawal gave ukraine a minimal amount of needed for an insurgency, sort of an afghan style insurgency. some you know, 90 javelins and some stingers through the baltic states. uh, and kind of said good luck. it was a foregone that was there. the us calculation what was the what was putin's calculation at the time, you know, in terms of what he thought was possible and even just, you know,

geopolitical events that might have shaped that, whether the war in afghanistan and america's effort. but what was going through his mind i mean, i don't know exactly what was going through his mind, but i think what is clear from what he said, what he has done, he published this essay, uh, about six months before the war. it's called on historical unity of ukrainians and russians. yes, it was reached out. every soldier in the russian armed forces. and the gist of it was that ukrainians don't really exist the ukrainians and russians are the same. there is this western imposed in kiev that would be swept away and and everyone in ukraine will agree the russians pretty much were flowers and i think this was really what he believed because otherwise there's no explanation why this invasion was launched with such poor preparation by russian troops. what cake, parade uniforms with them. and the way the force was so small, i mean 200,000 people is

enough to take over a country of nearly 40 million. and, um, and the russian officials at the time. what are they saying? we expect ukrainian armed forces to switch sides right away. and that calculation may have been correct. in 2014 when the ukrainian army didn't exist and when the whole idea of what russia is, was different because to many ukrainians and 2013, you know, russia, a country with less corruption, with higher salaries, better opportunities, and there was a genuine sympathy for us with many parts of eastern and southern ukraine, which we did see sort of during this ferment in 1214. but then once russia invaded and took over, donbas and this bloody war, parts of them, us you know the gap the main cities in about third of the land people had eight years to watch. what does it to live under russian rule and it meant economic collapse it meant

gangland violence and no prospects the future. most people living in the russian base fled to ukraine to europe, to russia and. in all the cities of eastern ukraine were hundreds of thousands of refugees. of them bus bus. and so when it traveled through ukraine just before the war, especially going to how to give and other places in the east and the south you could see this palpable that you know we know what happens when the russians come and we don't want it here. and i think this is something that putin did not count on and this is something that explains this extremely strong resistance by everyone in ukraine especially in the russian speaking areas that had sort of the brunt of the war when the war began. right. can you describe some of the pain of some of these early scenes of fighting? we can we can pull up some of these images i believe this is european, you know, what were you seeing as you ventured out?

what were some of your own as you thought about what to cover and where to go? yeah, i first i want to make a shout out to maneuverable and a pulitzer winning spanish photographer with whom i worked, uh, through this whole period and whose photographs are in book. so this is a scene from the first week of the war when the came to deliver every piece that separate said on the western edge of kiev and were trying to cross it and they were never able to get across and you know the day when the russians were approaching i was coming driving through kiev and i suddenly this giant crowd of several hundred men and women at the stadium, and we stopped to see what's going on. these were people just coming out of the high rises to go and get weapons, to go in and defend the city and in only one brigade of the ukrainian army was actually in kiev when the war began. most of the military was in the

bus. and so when i saw the scene, it was really a realization for me, all these in a way the russians can take it because it's literally sort the entire people that sprung up in opera singers, engineers you know, you name it, everyone and so this is this is one of the early battles there, i believe this is kharkiv. yeah. so this is the story of how to give up. this is the building of the hulk. if government headquarters. so we came there about two weeks into the war, having spent quite some time in kiev just three weeks earlier on this this this is on the main square of how to give a called freedom square and the street that leads from it was full of, you know, fancy, you know, boutiques of all the all the top. and then the russians just struck it and when we arrived there on this day, you know, several people died in an explosion in this building.

you know, dozens. and the was just was built every single building, its storefronts blown out. everything was open and it was really cold. so water had leaked from pipes and this giant icicles had formed. and every facade kind of clinking in the window was just a really otherworldly feeling. and yet, with all this fancy stores and boutiques basically open, no one was looting anything. you could have walked on the street and you could see, you know, the drinks are still in the and sort of on the shelves of the bar. and you got your bags still there. and there was this remarkable sense, civic order and solidarity that really impressed me because know, you never know how people will behave and, you know, people and how people in kiev have never been in the circumstances and this dignity was was really really something you know quite stunning to behold and that day, you know,

we went to a hospital and, uh, you know, in the war you usually kind of trained to deal with the, you see at the frontline, you know, because you have this instinct of self-preservation and you have to process the information. so if you see mangled bodies, the front line, it's but you try not to think about it and you put a filter and you record what you see and then you sort of retreat safely. so to be able to file but sometimes at this moments the small conversations that hit you emotionally so that they actually the following day we went a hospital this is a graphic image. so apologies in advance but this is this is a car just a car with civilians. and how kiev that was just random hit by russian grad missile and so what hospital and uh i was ushered into a room for little boy i was in a coma in a

bed after being struck by the russian artillery and his father there. and so i started speaking to the father, telling me what happened. and the father said, well, you know, i was outside ukraine working. so my wife and my sons were traveling the city. the car got hit. and so i just crashed and just drive to diego and i said, so what happened to your life? i said well, she's dead, but we can't about this because maybe he can overhear us. maybe i don't want him to know about this because he's got his own problems and this sort of like moments of human interaction, i think are ones that really get to you, you know, when you report. yeah, you had a line from i think was a father who you know was looking for the body of his son going to a morgue was not allowed in and he said just, you know, he was told something to the bodies are are almost on. and he had he said something like just show me even fingernail i can recognize him

by fingernail. what was it like interview people who were experiencing such trauma, such loss and what was the kind of care you took, you know, telling these stories? i think a lot of people this situations actually want to talk because, you know, i think it's easier if you talk things through and the trauma is a kind of talking when you have trauma is is liberating i mean this particular incident it was in nikolayev and you know there was morgue full of frozen bodies of soldiers and civilians so this was the father of a soldier who died in the very first day of the war in the russian missile on the base. and i remember talking to the attendant in that morgue who said, you know, because of these guys, you know, we can the streets and go to the shops and our city has been not been taken by, the russians, but going back to this, talking to people, i that when i visited territories

that were liberated, you know, areas that were under russian occupation for, you know, sometimes month, sometimes several a month, every conversation would last hours because just people just needed to tell the stories that they couldn't tell in the past because was dangerous to speak out. uh, you know, you could be killed for saying anything wrong about the russians. yeah. and your. i want to a little bit about butcher which, you know, as you describe in the book change, the sort of calculus for so many ukrainians. i believe it was your wall street journal colleague, brett forrest, who was the first western journalist to access country. what did the images and you know, sort of the you know we've looked at some airstrike missiles the way that civilians were impacted this but in an area where russians had captured this area fled quite quickly, didn't have the ability to cover up, you know, some of the atrocity that we're experiencing. ah what what did you see what was happening there and how did

it change ukrainians and even just challenge you know what that calculus that that we talked a little bit about that that question of you know are they really a country you know, is this really a country after all? yeah. i think even ukrainians, you know, many ukrainians didn't have illusions about russia. they still thought that because of this language know we are one people. we have our brothers and sisters. the russians would not necessarily commit atrocities of this scale against civilians, you know. yes the russians, you know, had done horrible things in chechnya and in syria. but many people had this belief that, yeah, but, you know, we kind of the same in their eyes, at least and i think butcher was the that the russians very successfully othered the ukrainians and dehumanize them and it's a small it's a prosperous you know and had a horse racing track and you know two old swimming pools. it's leafy and green and it's

basically exurb of kiev. when the russians came they the first thing they did was to, uh, basically jam all the networks so people could no longer make phone calls, not communicate, could no longer find out what was going on there. and then they started killing. you know, they were killing pretty much any man they suspected of being part of the resistance. they killed random bystanders that killed people on bicycles who were trying to go get some food. and it was a free fire zone. so 450 people died. the town, which i think by then a population maybe of 4000 or so, every person who was still in town was killed and the the ukrainian public and the world about this. a day after the peace in istanbul, at which, you know, ukraine and russia were trying to out if there is a way to end the war. and i think the the atrocity

scene seen in butcher convinced ukrainians including president lansky that you can't negotiate with the regime seeks to exterminate you and what what ukrainians have discovered in butcher what the world has discovered in was discovered because russia lost russia was beaten by russia had to retreat and people could see in places like mariupol where many many more civilians were killed. we don't know how many 10,000, 20, 30, 70. nobody knows because russia just bulldozed all the evidence after bombarding the city for three months and if you look at the statements made in today, two years later, you this genocidal intent is very clear. know you see the former president medvedev, who is the head of russia's ruling party, you know, deputy national advisor, saying openly the ukrainians see the existence of any state no matter how friendly to russia is a mortal threat to.

every ukrainian, ukrainians have a choice to die or to become russians and i think butcher was the first piece of visible evidence showing that as was the russian reaction to butcher those competing. while, you know, the russian propaganda. it's all, you know, crisis actors, nobody killed. and the chief russian negotiator said, well, you know, the cia and the ukrainians chose butcher as the place because it rhymes with the english butcher right. you know that that really i think global perspectives. you know zelinsky as you've written about visits this we're seeing these images but i think you also describe how particular communities were affected and i just want to you know to kind of maybe circle back to kiev actually, you know, how you describe the effect on the city's jewish community, you say but the mood in the city was

increasing grim, especially among kiev's jewish community. unlike in most of eastern europe, ukraine's jewish community hadn't been completely wiped out by the holocaust because many --, like my own grandmother, had managed to flee east return home after world war two. this is a community familiar with what? what were they experienced while putin was also claiming that this was a war to eradicate nazi? yeah. what of sort of step back a little bit into what is the idea of a modern ukrainian nationhood is. yeah you know ukrainian nationalism back in the 1930s 1940s was very different was a blood and soil sort of exclusion and exclusive jury nationalism and often anti-semitic. and i think the great the treatment of modern ukraine is, uh, in the late 20th century it came up with this very idea of an inclusive ukraine. so everybody who is in ukraine is ukrainian, kind of like everybody who's american

american. and this reinventing what it means to be ukrainian, where the marker ukrainian is just loyalty to the state as opposed to what language you speak with, blood you have and you know what religion you follow, i think is what saved ukraine. this is why ukraine right now can have a president who happens to be jewish defense minister, who happens to be muslim. and nobody in ukraine cares about that. and, you know, because, you know, ukrainian -- survived the holocaust to a greater extent than, say, the -- committed in poland, other countries. there was also great deal of intermingling during the times. and so in kiev, you know, there's hardly anyone who doesn't have, you know, jewish, distant or close relative, um, and when russia came into this war claiming, we're fighting the nazis and trying to portray ukraine and the ukrainian president as nazis.

on the first day of the war, all those billboards appeared in the streets and the billboards with the song from the soviet time about the nazi invasion, the soviet union, and the song, you know, at 4 a.m., the bomb kiev in the war had begun. and it was just, you know, the whole the whole the whole sort of pretense from moscow of some sort of nazi nature of the ukrainian states was just so ridiculous to anyone in ukraine. i mean, ukraine does have far right parties and does have some neo-nazis, but they never won more than 20 something percent in any election i want ask you a little bit about you know coming from these communities, coming from ukraine and and covering this. and there's a passage that really just, you know, i felt was so raw and personal, i would like to read it to the audience. you know, it felt wrong to wear on the streets of my own hometown vest and the helmet that i had donned of times in iraq, afghanistan and other war

zones by the botanical garden where i used to go on dates in high school and planted my awkward first kiss by the museum where i used to spend afternoons gazing at french and precious paintings by the cinema where as a teenager, i'd watched fellini's movies, their more sensual scenes removed by soviet the city that had come to take had been my. the russians thought it was theirs and a country they believed didn't exist just part of a nation they themselves had been invented. kiev seemed, on its deathbed listless bled of its people. how dare they? i thought. can you talk about the ways in which your coming from this community enhanced, your reporting? you know, allowed you to witness and see things, but also the ways in which that may have challenged to you. yeah, i think coming from a place and speaking languages understanding you know viscerally what people say

obviously removes the filter that a lot of other foreign correspondents has and that i had when i was covering other. and on the other hand having covered other conflicts and having looked other wars from an outsider perspective also gave me an opportunity to see things in perspective. and explaining to twitter, to our readers in the united states and elsewhere. because i think had i just been, you know, living in ukraine all my life, i probably wouldn't have written this book, this way in the way i have written it. and obviously, we all have feelings and we all have our own biases and prejudices and it's know we have to acknowledge that we are, you know, stenographers, we're not machines. and i think, you know, this is one of the rare moments in the book where. i do speak about what i was feeling, but i think through the rest of it, i'm just trying to be like a camera zooming in on what's happening. i mean, one of the reviewers

called the style of cinema very tense. so just letting other people speak. yes, there are many characters in the book through whose lives i the conflict, you know, i mean i mean the beginning. one of them, you know, abandoned job as a shop operator in thailand to come fight another. one was inspiring a lawyer and then a move in the front lines and you know, and one was a ukraine multi-millionaire interpret. erika was skiing in austria when the war began. he dropped everything and he home to her to give to creative brigade that is now fighting. so that, you know, the biases might there you know we're all human let's it's like transparency almost a form of objectivity here which is you give that background, you give this experience, but you're also not led by it. you know, there are so many scenes you tell in which you, you know, you remark upon the way that the bodies of russian soldiers are treated and, you know, you imagine, you know, i it was like the wife of this

particular person is calling his cell phone and able to pick up. and you see that humanity in there. so it certainly you know, i think it's very helpful, especially to those of us here who are at the journalism school and thinking about, you know, how do you this work? how do you draw what this an asset? and then how do you think critically about having those lenses that allow you to maybe step outside of, you know, your experience and you've done that i think so well in this book. thank you. and the key word you said is humanity. i think far too often when we write about things, when i think about things, we'll look at them through this geopolitical prism of, you know, national interests and countries and governments and forget the humanity. always millions of people who are caught in conflict in how it affects their lives, that are in many ways very similar to our lives and we can relate to. yeah. yeah. i think that that and this applies to every conflict, not just ukraine. absolutely. i want i will be asking you about other conflicts shortly, but, you know, i think it's it's also important to think about,

you know, how you kept safe. you were constantly i mean, you had a chance to leave the country. you stayed and you continued to go to places that are incredibly difficult. but in your book, you also describe, you know, working with this incredible security team, thinking through, you know, the risks that you're taking. can you describe just how you thought about your safety and the safety of those around you? yeah. so i think the first going back to your about being from ukraine, so the fewer people you have the safer you are. so not having to use translator or a fixer meant you know you could take higher risks because very often it is the locals that actually get hurt first and they don't have the they don't have the, you know, all the peer connections. and so and so there was just two of us. it was me maneuverable, the photographer. and in the beginning steve character in the book who is the head of risk at the wall street journal and, a british military

veteran who drove, you know, our car around and, you know, the war. ukraine is very different from the worse that we covered. it's not afghanistan, not iraq. you know, the russians can kill you from any distance. you stay in a hotel is dangerous. give the stuff targeting hotels and which is, you know, ten, 15 miles. and so i didn't have the skills of how understand that risk and how to deal with it so stick with it. so on the day that photo sort of the beginning was taken we were at the bridge in the opinion the russians started shelling and and they killed quite a few people around us and stephen you to say okay well there is the outgoing you you count 7 seconds this is the incoming okay and next time we hit outgoing duck and so kind of went running, ducking over seven, six, 7 seconds. and this is the first war in

which both the wall street journal but also, i think organizations really had to use a pretty much all the time was very costly and necessary, uh, security advice just of the sheer extent of dangerous. it's intense. when you are on the wrong side of much more powerful army and air force, the risks are very different, right? your, your undertaking this reporting. and in the book you really lead to, i think, you know, a very formative moment, a moment of opportunity. you've also written about this, you know, in the post, but essentially, i think it's the fall of 2022. there's a string of, you know, this resistance, this miraculous that he's describing, these the ability to take territory and was a moment in which ukraine was asking western countries for more. what is your argument about that

and whether it was a missed opportunity? well, it's an argument. i mean, but the facts of matter is that the ukrainian government was asking for tanks, for artillery systems, for multiple launch rocket systems, for planes throughout the beginning of 2022. and it's not an argument forgive and was denied. you know, people in washington, people in berlin said this would cross russian red lines. this is extravagant. we will never them low paths and and abraham says because russia successfully used nuclear blackmail the russian president on the first day of the war went on television and said if you will help ukraine you see the consequences, the likes of which you will never. you have never seen any history. and so when ukraine managed to break through russian with a surprise offensive and have given to them in september 2022 and started pressing further and

further, there was no forthcoming. they didn't have all the gear. what have you to explain this breakthrough and this was the time when the russian army was at its weakest. russia had lost many personnel in ukraine that in september 2022, it had about 100,000 troops left in ukraine. and president putin was refusing to mobilize more because. doing so would have meant acknowledging that a special military operation was not going to plan. and it is critical. ukraine ran out of steam. putin at the same time announced that he's annexing ukrainian regions, none of which he gets controls. until now, and said from now on, who will defend them? all of all our capabilities. this is not a bluff, quote unquote. and ukraine called the bluff and ukraine kept going and took her son in following weeks. and there was no nuclear

response. and putin did not use weapons. then the following year finally, the risk of relations in washington and elsewhere in ukraine received everything it had been asking before it received the tanks, the bradleys, the strikers, the patriots and the f-16 over the way. but by then, russia had mobilized several hundred thousand reservists and several months building fortifications, laying. so when this ukrainian actually began last year, it was a whole different war. so historic opportunity really was lost in part because successfully used the nuclear blackmail. it's it's what have been the kind of responses, you know, in washington you know, as you kind of talked about this what are the kind of feelings about this this moment i think there's lot of blame game going on now and nobody wants to take responsible for failures. and obviously there were also

failures on the part of the ukrainian military and nobody's perfect and you know, ukraine is fighting a much, much, much more powerful force. and the very fact that two years into the war, we're still talking about ukrainian offensives. when ukraine was supposed to have collapsed in three days, is is a miracle. i think in europe there more realization that this opportunity had been missed. but now with the whole different situation, you know, money for ukraine has run out. it's dried up. you know congress is unable to pass additional funding and we now see in the battlefield that ukraine is running out of ammunition. you know, russia has in part thanks to north korean help, massively manage and this delay, which was, you know, end in sight for now, especially, you know, depending on what happens in the us presidential election in november, it is costing, it is. the cost of it is measured in ukraine, lives every day, hundreds of ukrainian lives.

right. and now global landscape changed dramatically as well. you know, there's that other wars and conflicts happening in israel and gaza with the houthies. and it seems like a lot of attention that's divided in this moment. what do you think the way forward is in terms, you know, what might happen. next up? i think if you look at this sort of strictly material part of it, you know the weapons that the us can give to ukraine versus weapons it's giving to israel, there is an overlap, especially in artillery, but not overlap in other systems. for example, in a lot of the things that israel wants are the interceptors against air for air defense systems, for for the iron dome. i think what has happened is that more importantly is that there is a perception and they are incorrect in parts of the

world, especially the global south, that the us in the last hour engaging in double standard when it comes to killing of ukrainians and the, you know, the massive horrendous casualties in gaza. and i think that situation has allowed russia to despite all the horrible massacres it has committed to claim moral high ground and made it harder to put pressure on russia internationally and made it harder for countries, especially in the global south, to support ukraine. and again so what are we seeing? we're coming back to the situation where conflicts are viewed through, a geopolitical prism rather than empathy and, you know, palestinians or, ukrainians are seen as pawns in this global struggle of narratives. and people with their agents sometimes. i was really moved by a piece

that yaroslav wrote, i think it was december first in the in the journal on this subject, sort of selective empathy that we're seeing and just how frequently, you know, as you've just said, that this conflict or these conflicts, whether that the war in ukraine or the israel-gaza war are viewed through the lens of these existing geopolitics, all perspectives as opposed to like a concern for the human condition or a concern for the sanctity of human life, equally that one life is equal to another. in the context of journalism. and for the journalists in the room, how important is it to keep that to refrain from that kind of selective empathy, but really valuing lives in the way that we're we're talking about right now? i think it's critical and again. i mean, we all have our biases and preconceived ideas, but i think focusing on humanity is is why we do it. i mean, this is our entire mission in is to improve the condition by telling the stories

of the world. and very often these are the stories of the people who cannot tell their stories themselves, who are voiceless and you know, in this book, i really tried to go anywhere i could to to get these people to talk and to tell what was happening to them. i want to before we open it up for questions i do want to just show, i think, some more images from from eastern ukraine, from donetsk i think this is yeah, this is a woman whose was just destroyed by the russians in near the mine in eastern ukraine. you know she was telling us some very clear russian, you know, this is the russian world has come to us. what are going to do next. and then is the thing was a funeral parlor. yeah. so this is in the city of, uh, uh severodvinsk just a couple of weeks before it taken by russia. so it was shelled, destroyed. there was not much left of it. and so the one shelter the locals had was ironic. in the funeral parlor, in the basement of a funeral parlor.

wow. and was it actively being used at the time or. yeah, well this is this is the are in the basement. there's all these families. they've been sleeping there for a month where they're also being kept. and i asked them, you know, do you know anything about how the war is? because there was no electricity there. a phone service was long and said, we don't know anything about what happened to our relatives down the street let alone what's happening on the front lines. wow. i want to bring it back home to you would give to journalists. you know as you reflect upon your career in multiple war zones, as you think about taking care of as you do this work as think about things you've learned the way what would you what would you tell them? i think rule number one is talk to as many people as possible. and i think when you think you have enough in another book. do it again again, because you always learn things that he wouldn't otherwise. in this case, working with a photographer uh, was really

because, you know, photographers need to see things. so sometimes when you write a story you have and i think to have enough but because you know we couldn't separate and he had to push i actually got to see like more things that i, i would and i made the stories better and it made the book better. yeah, that's beautiful. okay, i think we're going to allow people to come up, too, to start asking. so please make your way to the microphone. and again, as bill said, just make sure your question is a question that i have a comment. for. the two of us went to prague together. in july 1990. i'm both them collect. so it was probably one of your first foreign trips and beginning of your work was in germany. but my question pertains to to the title our enemies will vanish. i it's a reference to ukrainian anthem. yeah but white varnish or parrish so is here like national ranking. so not not not disappear but. but but but but. die so is this change.

thank you. well, i mean, it's a question of how to translate, but if you go for the full line and say is our enemies will vanish, like do sunrise. so you sort of vanish in a more political way, not necessarily a bloody hello thank you for coming. and sharing your your book and your your story. we really appreciate it. i'm wondering in a war zone where you have a lot of free and ability to make decisions about where you're going how do you choose where to go and where to put your resources, find story and find people. well i think on one hand, you choose where the is, but also. you know, ukraine didn't have this formal embed system with long procedures like afghanistan. you basically had to know people who trust you because a single photo could get them killed. you know, if you have a photo of a soldier with a building in the background with the geolocated

and the russians could fire missile, you know, an hour later. and so you had to build through issues of relationships, of trust and we did and i did manage but you know many people across the list and we'll just come back to check up on these people again and again and again as the war developed and i moved from place to place. and i think a lot of access was just driven by trust, a personal level. great. thank you. thank you for coming my question was about ukrainian diaspora. recently zelensky opened a discussion to expanding dual citizenship for the ukrainian diaspora that has been very much promoting to help the country this war and considering that you yourself are a member of the ukrainian diaspora. so i was wondering how do you think they have served ukraine

and how ukraine perceive this action the future of the ukraine diaspora played a critical role, especially in the soviet times, in preserving developing ukrainian culture, where so many of the writers and poets were banned in the soviet union and obviously the ukraine. both old and new, you know, helped. and so many ukrainians living abroad lives, families, jobs came to ukraine when the war began and started to fight. also to help us as nurses and doctors and not just ukrainians. also what struck me is how many americans, europeans from any corner of the world also were so moved by the images from ukraine, they came to help. we have an audience in an armored car and i'm at mean who know brought several hospitals to ukraine and spent much of his time in ukraine. he's one of the characters in the book and this is probably

was of the elements as a journalist where you really see the result of you writing something people covering the news and readers or people who see news and television react to this by coming doing things to help directly. thank you all. i love working in new york. so thank you very much for a wonderful book you've covered many wars. libya, iraq, afghanistan. you've been and breathing this war for two years. i mentioned your assessment of the media coverage fti post, times journal own operation and do you think the stories are that people have missed in retrospect and that they should be looking at this year in 2024, i think we had a blast that had

many and and courageous and excellent colleagues in those news organizations you mentioned that did the same things i did and went to the frontlines and and told the stories. i think the problem now is that attention has shifted to other parts of the world. you know, there's just horrendous war going on in gaza, but people are still dying in ukraine every day. and tragedy still occurring in ukraine every day, even though people are no longer paying attention to that the way they used to. and i think that is probably the biggest challenge going forward. yeah, thanks. yes. you very much for your talk and conversation. we've talked a little bit the calculus of this war and you've mentioned some writings that may stand behind this invasion. to what extent economics plays a role and specifically, we know

that the oil prices been rising in 2013 and 14 and there were rewards in the aggressor. and we also that oil prices were rising before before the invasion. so the aggressor was financially rewarded for or at least making an appearance of so. thank you. well, you point very correctly what happened after the first invasion of 14. you know, germany signed the nord stream two agreement. president obama refrained from imposing any costs on russia and said that no matter what we do, russia will always dominate ukraine. he said in the interview with the atlantic and putin concluded that there wouldn't be a high price to pay and perhaps if kiev had fallen three days before days, as he expected, there wouldn't have been. thank you very much.

hello, yaroslav thank you for being here. i a question. i was a volunteer in donetsk oblast for about a year and after year there i was left with kind of a nagging question working in a lot of these villages, you know, around the front line. i encountered the people who stayed. attitudes that ranged from abbeville to pro-russian. and encountered that very frequently. so there's a question i have, which is if ukraine were consolidate the territories of donbas tomorrow, what would kiev to do to bridge the the political gap between people who stayed who are largely and people who would return, who would be pro-ukrainian? how would you reconcile that? like to create stability in the region? yeah, it's a very good question. and i talk about this term. these people are called the name, the ones are waiting and

even in the in places like bermuda or severodvinsk and the horrendous violence in daily shelling, there would still be people there, very few who are staying because were expecting the russians and they thought the russians better. and that's the power of russian propaganda. and and and brainwashing some way to some extent. but this is a small percentage because the last of people in the cities had fled to ukraine, to the west. they didn't want to live under the russians. and i mean, there is this conflict and we have seen how it's resolved and how kiev, uh, you know, when ukraine reclaimed the cities and how kiev almost active collaborators with the russians just left for russia. and but there was a reckoning and was there was tension. i remember talking to and i'm describing in the book i'm not even talking to schoolteachers and pants who say you know our husbands are fighting in the war

and this woman who led our school forced us to you know, teach in russian. and that russian curriculum is still here and punished. how is this fair and wants to back to her job? so i think is this is an issue that will be in future. but what i have not is retribution. if you remember what happened, france after the nazi occupation, you know, the women shaved head, the hair shaved and prayed in the streets for consorting the enemy. nothing of the kind happened in the ukrainian regions that have been liberated. you so much. pious life. thank you for presentation. i was just curious your thoughts on two points. one is columbia's own jeffrey sachs about the role of needle on this conflict. in general, thoughts about that. and also, you mentioned the peace talks. yeah. okay. according the chief ukrainian negotiator, david, a cameo in an televised interview. he said that which, by the way,

about a month after the war started, the peace talks that that the deal was on the table until johnson arrived and, in his words, said that we're not doing we're not signing anything doing war. your thoughts about those two things. thank you very much. yeah, thank you so, first of all, nadim, you know, there was no movement towards natal in the summer of 2008. ukraine and georgia were told you will become one day members of natal and then crickets. you know georgia was a very turn eight. uh, ukraine was tough. 14 didn't receive any western weapons, any assistance, and there was no negotiation, no path to membership. nothing was occurring and still isn't occurred. so i think it's, uh, and if you listen to what the are saying, look, motivated not to commit but the ukrainians don't exist full stop any ukraine is a

threat to us even the threat of ukraine. now there is a lot of, uh description in this book about what happened and in istanbul and what about istanbul? is this, uh, the russians wanted neutrality, but what does neutrality mean to the russians? they want a cut in ukraine. forces to levels that would not allow to defend itself. and most important, to their neutrality he meant no western weapons, no western advisors and ukrainian law. they expanded all the russian ammunition. so neutrality on table was disarmament and knowing the history you know russia there, we know what it leads to. and yes boris johnson did come to ukraine and i talked to boris johnson and he very clearly expressed his opinions to press zelensky. but already before that when zelenskyy went butcher and saw the massacres there he said

publicly, you know, we had more than a week before rice's arrival, he said, how can we talk to these people after what they have? what is their sense? do any of this negotiation. well, thank you. it's a larger conversation. but thank you very much. all right. thanks very much for. a really interesting conversation. i'm curious, you think two years in, you know, now that you said there's another conflict. obviously, israel and gaza and also i think it's pretty common knowledge that the west just doesn't have the supply of weapons that it once did. certainly not from a year or two years ago. i've watched a lot of interviews with political figures in ukraine from i mean, poroshenko and certainly are ostovich. and there seems be a lot of jockeying for the next president, you know, who's to be the next the next president. and my question is in your interviews with people ukrainians, do you get a sense that there is a weariness you,

know, in terms of having a war and a desire like to make you know, have a reconciliation make some kind of, you know, compromises and do you think that's. wolanski or do you think that they support zelensky as much as before? and do you think that he'll in power for another year or two years, another term? i'll start the end. you know, if you look at the history of, independent ukraine zelenskyy is the sixth president in 30 years and only one of the six presidents was reelected a second term. so ukrainians don't have this cult of personality and so desire for strong leader and so i don't know what will happen is a landscape maybe he will win maybe not the war is not for zelensky or poroshenko. the war is for preservation of not just the ukrainian state. but ukrainian nation culture, language, identity all those things that russia very openly says it wants to wipe out. which brings us to your main question.

how is a compromise possible when the stated goal of russia is to annihilate you. you know, this whole idea that, well, you to force the ukrainians to the negotiating but there is no negotiating table if you look at it from the russian perspective in russia next is for regions to of russian regions represent here are under ukrainian occupation. how can putin settle for it along these lines? it's impossible. yeah. i mean, i see your point totally but the one question that i would have regarding that is given the history between ukraine and russians and certainly, you know, the families that are both ukrainian and russian, the you know, the many relationships that are that way, is there a strong sense especially in the east, that some kind of compromise is going to be inevitable? i think that's the east has changed. and i'm talking a changed dramatically. and, you know, in the book, i'm talking to the mayor, kiev, you know who speaks russian in public, who spent much of his career before war trying to

prevent the renaming of streets named. after zubkov, the soviet commander. and he says that you people in eastern ukraine now are the anti-russian people in ukraine, because to them the war meant destruction of their homes, the killing of their relatives. you know all the horrors that could be imagined. whereas for people who are considered to be anti-russian, western ukraine, luckily for them largely the war is still something lost on television and that's their hope. just today, you know, was after many years of opposition, said we should probably rename the pushkin street in kiev as our in if because why would you have what should we have the main street in fact named after russian port so. i think the mood is really really different and even within. and again i heard it again and again know there would be i spoke to a woman and had to give

was home was under bombardment. she called her father who was living in moscow and it was said, i don't believe you impossible that the russian army, the noble russian army, will be bombing your neighborhood. it must be the nazis. so this dividing line runs through families the most direct blood relatives, let alone, you know, the. and it's a tragedy. thank you very much. sorry. thank you. okay thanks. good evening. islam or crimea. i have a question from who has absolutely no background in general ism on how talk media should treat and quote information provided russian state media still in second year of the full scale invasion. the events in ukraine are sometimes as quite often portrayed in a way of russia, says that ukraine says it and we don't know like what's actually happening. and you maybe bolivar is that in ukraine? of course it's a huge outrage because we say, okay, how can you quote russian government to the media? has it have such a huge track record of lying and why provide them like a credible source? and to be fair, russian best his

government's governments of kiran korea do not get that luxury in the world media. so do things that should change and is yellow was you you on treatment and from governments they don't have a very good track record of to us thank you i it's a great question and actually it's the one we grappled with a lot uh, during covering this, i'll give an example. all right. uh, there was a prison camp in donbass that held ukraine prisoners id, and so then the news comes out of moscow saying, you know, ukrainian airstrike at the camp killed, you know, several hundred ukrainian prisoners. and this is the first news that anybody has. and people kind of go it until more evidence emerges from ukraine. hours later, because the critics have to check that actually it's the russians who blew up the camp to kill the p.o.w.s and there was no strike from ukraine and, you know, it's inevitable that news organizations kind of go to the first news, even

though say it's unconfirmed because is the news. and i think there is this habit of saying, well he says, she says, you know, when you cover things in the reasonable society, you can presume that both parties not lying, whereas in russia you do have this systematic lying by. the government, you know, the russia military has reportedly, you know, destroyed in a ten times the number of planes that ukraine has had. and so the way we started doing it, we'll look at, you know, which side has a track record on not telling the truth and saying that. and sometimes when are obviously untrue, which don't spread it because it's untrue. but it's a challenge. it's a challenging, you know, for all journalists think covering this conflict or i thank you very much for the conversation i had a quick question about this popular notion of eastern west divide

ukraine specifically that between people who speak ukrainian, people. russian people are perhaps more connected to russia and people are more connected to europe as the notion goes, first off, i'm wondering where where why does that notion still exist in a lot of media discourse about the war, especially back in 2014, but even after february 24th, 2022 and second off, what can people do to sort of come back, dismiss conception that perhaps the people -- other lusophone ukrainians or from regions of ukraine are connected to russia or even indeed russian as some of the narratives sometimes go. i goes to the discourse, you know because russia the colonial master of ukraine and of many other countries nearby a lot of the scholarship and the understanding of ukraine through a russian colonial lens and the russians say if you speak russian, you must be with us without understanding.

this is a legacy of colonialism, just like many people in ireland, most people in ireland speak english because of centuries of colonialism doesn't make the english and we have seen, through the practical events of past years that, again, you know, there is no loyalty to russia among the russian speakers, ukraine, if you look at the current government presence, grew up speaking russian minister of defense, grew up speaking. russian. the national security advisor was, the mayor of lugansk in donbas. so and they are all fighting and leading the struggle. so this divides politically was perhaps to an extent valid before the russian invasion when it was about language, not about the sovereignty of the country, but it no longer is a political now at all. i think you like as of who are fighting in mariupol mean they are pretty much all russian speakers. thank you.

hello. i wonder if you face the same challenge that i did when you were in the war zone. are there any situations or instances where feel you have to abandon your journalists duties and simply help in distress? and i'm asking you to go into any details. if you don't want to. thank you. well, obviously. thank you. i mean, if somebody is injured next to you, you help that person and you bundle them in and them to the nearest, you know medical point. i think what often happened me, for example, is when we would go to these towns where people had been without communications for a month, they would ask me to call their parents in. how could you in kiev them where life work and even some photo. so that was a very common request and obviously you know what about food we had in the car we'll just leave it for people for so many good scenes you have in which people ask you

for you know, can you help me to remove the water from here? can you help me take those? yeah. well, they recommend buying the book that that woman who was in the picture that we actually extinguish the fire in our house. so you spoke a lot about reporting on ukraine as a ukrainian after avoiding it? at first. and there's a lot of discussion in the academic community right now about ukrainian who study ukraine and their ability be objective in the work they produce and to what extent that should be valued over personal experience. i know journalism special in its relationship with objectivity, but can you speak more about how you dealt with this and maybe give some advice for ukrainians across disciplines whose work involves ukraine in some way? yeah, i nobody have a total myanmar objective in my writing for the journal. don't not people have read the book yet, but i think we live in the world where people from all over stories, all over and you know it's not it's not sort of the germans in the past, you know, somebody from harvard, you know, parachutes into base war zones and writes everything through the prism of the

hamptons. so i'm going to start saying that the prism of the hamptons hamptons and so as long as you the truth, that shouldn't be an issue. and i think for academia for journalism, for any occupation. i so when looking dehumanization is the first step to genocide what tools does a group have or cannot employ to fight its own dehumanize asian. i. i mean there are many tools to go from the army to telling your own stories and and explaining, you know, your culture preserving your culture. i think what's really struck me in kiev is that in this two years, the number of bookshops has doubled, tripled because suddenly, you know, printing books, selling books, maintaining the culture, became

a form of resistance. and, uh you know, i think we've seen for other places, i think, you can you provide or share some insight about what the russian people as individuals and as a collective are thinking and their attitude. the war. is it analogous, perhaps, to what the germans were doing during war two as a nation, or when the soviet union invaded afghanistan and then after many, many years or maybe three antiwar protests here in the united states against the vietnam. and i think. first of all, i think we should not be speaking about anyone thinking things collectively, because, again, know every people is a collection of individuals each of whom thinks differently. and i certainly wouldn't want to be labeled, you know, with a collective label of what we see,

unfortunately, that in russia, a lot of the people who oppose the or fortunately for them, they have left the country because they want to fight it or they don't want to live with the consequences. but we do not see any significa protest movement within. the russian people that shows opposition to the war and threatens the regime. and i think part of the problem is that a lot of what putin about the ukrainians, unfortunately, is shared by many russians in, russia is that there is an empire that has never gone decolonization of the mind. you know, we have, you know, when when we're looking kipling, you know, we'll we look at kipling through the prism, you know, also the atrocities in the british empire, in india, etc. but nobody's this to pushkin, to dostoyevsky, who were also. you know, pushkin called for war. so to be razed to the ground

because they dared to rise up against the russians and, even the sort of the dissident classics, russian literature adopted similar views. joseph was a poet laureate. united states wrote a poem on independence in ukraine, saying a split in the deeper river. we should we fall backwards because these ungrateful ukrainians and he used slur words there to separate themselves from us. and so i think that idea that ukraine is not really a country they're not very different it's part of the reason why there is so. opposition to the war. thank you so much for the great presentation and i'm here to thank you and your team at wall street journal for saving my life in kabul and really kidding me to ukraine after. kabul collapsed and. my question is that are you planning to write a book on kabul and the lives of people

that helped to change. thank so much. so was profiled in the wall street journal as one of the people who were had the most to lose. so the taliban takeover and then the ukrainian was the only one that took her in and she in ukraine when the war began this is who amazon helps evacuate. yeah in part. and so. you know, i saw mine. her other colleague was there. and stevo, you i was a security risk chief. he gave his own body armor to most of my friends. and so we had to tape his plates with duct tape every morning until got the new one. and to answer your question, yes, i hope so. massimo, may i ask, what are you what you doing now? so i recently graduated from rutgers school. yeah i did data science. i did my master's in data science. and graduated last december.

so that's really congratulate. i would love to chat with you afterwards so thank you so much. that's a tough act to follow thank you so much good journalism needed now more than ever as a climate and human rights activist, i'm curious about your self-care. you spoke the soldiers who have to do what they do and then they go back and process. i imagine that's true for. you too. but what do you do for self-care and how do you keep. great. i write a book. i feel like that has the opposite effect on me. but okay, i trust the trauma now. but seriously, i think by verbalizing things and them in writing actually helps you process what you've have seen and what noticed. when i was writing this, because

in this age of i taped all my interviews and i had all my photos and my whatsapps going back to all that, i realized how much i had blocked of my memory and how many things i had chosen to forget in order to keep going. and that was this rediscover of how selective your memory can be. you don't keep notes, so tape all the interviews thank you. hello i'm wondering, has the way that you approach your relationship with your russian colleagues and the russian people changed since the war. no, no. i think i, i mean, the key, again, is to see humanity in everyone. and if it is a russian person who is supporting the killing of ukrainian, then it doesn't matter if it's a russian person or any other person. and, you know, there are russian people who came to ukraine to

fight for ukraine and who are dying for ukraine. i think the country to treat people on what blood they have and origin they have, we would treat them based on how they behave, what they did. i before we up and you sign books and greet all your fans, i just want to say thank you so much for bringing your expertise, your experiences, your personal background sharing some of these photos with us and, you know, really nailing what? i hope so of the journalism school students who are here take away about the need, you know, really this kind, incredible empathy, the need to really bring your the best of what's and assets you have while challenging to really get to the truth and the ways and the ways in which you put this and other conflicts in contact complex it

can be so hard to talk about in this manner. so thank you so much. it was a pleasure. thank you. thank.