Transcripts For CSPAN3 Yaroslav 20240704 : vimarsana.com

CSPAN3 Yaroslav July 4, 2024

Hello, everyone. Good evening. Thanks for making it through a rainy wednesday night in new york city. My name is bill grueskin im 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. Were very honored to host your profile trofimov, whos 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 ukraines 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 youll be signing books for that. Right. Okay, great. Just a quick word. Tonights event is cosponsored by two organizations. One is the simon and john lee center for global journalism at the j school. Its 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 nations largest and oldest association of journalists, are engaged in international news. Ill 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 didnt 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 hes taken on some of the worlds 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 youll 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. Well chat for around 45 minutes, after which well 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, its 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 its 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 thats happening in, your homeland. And i want to delve more into how that has shaped your reporting in just a moment. But id 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 wasnt ratified and wasnt. 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 theres 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 baghdads main square and the saddam statue was. Yeah, and behind that soldier is, the kind of whatever remains of saddams 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, well 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 couldnt write. I want actually just take us to a beginning scene in your book. Um, so its 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 whats going through your mind . Yeah. So there was an interview that was supposed to happen many days later and all of a sudden ive got a call saying, come, nows 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 prowestern 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. Hes 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 putins 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 americas effort. But what was going through his mind i mean, i dont 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. Its 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 dont 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 theres 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 didnt 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 dont 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 whats 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 its 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 selfpreservation and you have to process the information. So if you see mangled bodies, the front line, its 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, shes dead, but we cant about this because maybe he can overhear us. Maybe i dont want him to know about this because hes 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 its 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 th

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