-How do you see Ukraine? a means of communication like yours after almost a year of war? How can the conflict evolve?
-The situation is dire. Military and civilians die every day. There are already more than three hundred days of war and, unfortunately, Putin has not the slightest intention of putting an end to this barbarity. He continues to believe that he can occupy and control more and more territories. Not even international support for Ukraine deters him.
It threatens the very existence of the Ukrainian people and our state. The citizens are showing great resistance, but many see their lives destroyed by the war. Every day we face disaster. In the dead of winter, we suffer blackouts and spend hours and hours without light, without heating, without water.
-It is the high price that your people are paying for refusing to return to the Russian orbit.
-Yeah. It is the price we are paying for pretending to be a democratic state that appreciates its independence and does not want to be part of the Russian state. We already saw this in the Euromaidan demonstrations and riots in 2014, in which more than a hundred people died. The war did not start in 2022; it did so in 2014 with the occupation of Crimea and Donbas. The lack of response to these actions is what has resulted in this terrible war.
-Is Russia losing the war?
-They thought to take over the Ukraine in three days and they did not succeed. But the setback they suffered in the first two months of the war has not deterred Russia from its plan to invade and destroy the Ukraine. Our country, together with the international community, is fighting to stop the war, but Putin’s army continues to advance, intensifying the offensive, shelling critical infrastructure, launching more missiles and killing civilians. We have witnessed brutal war crimes with complete impunity in many cities and towns occupied by Russian troops, where citizens have told us of atrocities.
When asked how long the war can last, I always try to explain that many Ukrainians still live under the yoke of the occupation. And if the war stopped tomorrow, they would continue to live under the Russian threat. We need to recover all those territories to protect our people and help them survive.
-Does Putin intend to escalate the conflict beyond the borders of Ukraine?
-We did not stop Putin in 2014 and that is what has led us to this war. I am convinced, one hundred percent, that if we don’t stop Putin now in Ukraine, he will go after other countries like the Baltics or Poland.
-Poland? That is NATO territory.
I think so, yes. Putin worked as a KGB agent, he is a product of the Soviet empire and he thinks he can restore that empire. It is what gives meaning to his life. Russian propagandists talk about occupying Berlin, about bombing London, and it’s not just rhetoric. Those same propagandists previously said that they needed Ukraine to be part of Russia and that it had to be occupied, and that is what already happened in 2014.
Does the West help enough?
-We are very grateful for the help we received. We give thanks for receiving tanks now and perhaps planes in the future. With them it will be easier to recover territories and free our people. The European allies have seen how the war is costing many human lives and have understood that they have to help us. In three months we will see how the tanks sent reinforce the counteroffensive of the Ukrainian army. But Putin is not going to sit idly by, he is going to continue destroying. He doesn’t want to negotiate and nobody wanted to negotiate with Hitler after committing war crimes in 1942 and 1943. This is exactly the same.
Putin must be defeated as soon as possible. Without the support of the West, our victory is not possible, which would be the triumph of European democratic values. This is a fight for human rights that Russia is violating in the Ukraine, in Belarus and with her own people.
The victory of Ukraine would be the triumph of European democratic values & rdquor;
-You are in charge of one of the most influential media outlets in Ukraine. Do you feel especially threatened by your work?
-A lot. The difficulties are terrible. More than forty Ukrainian and foreign journalists have already been killed since the start of the war. I myself lost a good journalist friend, Brent Renaud, early in the war. He was an American and he traveled to the Ukraine to film a documentary about refugees.
Russian forces detain, attack and kidnap journalists on the front lines or in Russia. One of our colleagues, Viktoria Roshchina, was held captive for eleven days. We exerted a lot of pressure and eventually the Russian authorities released her. She continues to report from very dangerous places.
-Doing journalism there, in addition to being dangerous, is an odyssey.
-Yeah. The Russians continually try to disrupt our information capabilities. But, since we have been at war for nine years, today we are better prepared for blackouts. Whether or not our information reaches more than a million people depends on locating five liters of fuel.
More than 40 journalists have already been assassinated since the beginning of the war& rdquor;
The challenges are many. Although there have been donations, we have lost more than 60% of our advertising revenue. We don’t even know if we will be able to pay the payroll in the next few months. Financial support for independent Ukrainian media is crucial.
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-And I imagine that the fight against misinformation is a constant.
-Indeed. One of the biggest obstacles is disinformation, which Russia uses as a tool of war. Propaganda is part of her strategy. A year before the Russian invasion, the Ukrainian government banned pro-Russian television channels for the manipulation that accompanied their news. In the rest of Europe they have now been banned. The propaganda sought to dehumanize the Ukrainian population and justify the war in the “denazification & rdquor; from the country. This propaganda has poisoned the brains of the citizens of Russia. There is no freedom of the press. All independent media have been struck down in the last twenty years.