Watch the full video on YouTube:
Marian Kushnir:
When you look from the height that is now, for the period 2020-2021, or you remember together with the military: “Remember, we were sitting there, a mine flew at us, or LNG?”. And you sit and laugh together, because well, what is a mine, what is an LNG compared to a missile, aviation, cluster air bombs.
Risks now and risks then are heaven and earth. This is a completely different war. If I had gone back a few years with this experience, I would have just been funny and bored there.
This is another war, a different pace, a different dynamics of events, when at one point you can be surrounded, as at the beginning of a full-scale invasion, and not know where the Russian army is, how it will behave. When I drove to the same conditional Borodyanka after it was bombed, and I did not know if there was anyone there or not. I arrive, they tell me on the spot: “Oh, the columns of Russians have just passed here.” And how to act?
Andriy Dubchak:
In 2015-2017, you came to the same trench, a dungeon, mostly to the same military. The picture did not change in you, in some places trenches grew with grass above your head, and in principle, everything was clear. And you were on the spot looking for some topic in order to somehow tell it more thoroughly. And at the moment for today, we are only going to this.
Serhiy Nuzhnenko:
Society is tired of war. Most of the military, to my banal question whether civil society has forgotten about the war, say that yes, it has forgotten. And one of the main reasons that is voiced to me is that people do not have fear, that fear that there was in March-February 2022. And he was the driving force.
Marian Kushnir:
I will add that civilians do not have this understanding of what is happening in Donetsk, Luhansk regions, what is happening in Zaporizhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Kherson regions, or Kharkiv region. The intensity of the war there is not the missiles in Kiev.
These are the daily dead, the daily wounded, the daily destroyed infrastructure, the stench, the dirt, the cold, the swamp, the trenches, the machine gun, the mice. It's all there. The civilian population in Kyiv will not understand this.
Andriy Dubchak:
The problem is that people are tired. But Ukrainians inside the country and even abroad, those who have left, they know at least superficially what is happening, they receive this information, willingly or not.
But we have a bigger problem: at the world level, Ukraine is being forgotten. And this leads to the fact that the leadership of other countries does not have the incentive to help Ukraine more strongly, to give more weapons, more money. We have to work very hard here.
Marian Kushnir:
One of the powerful foreign media producers at a state meeting with officials, when discussing why the world's interest in the Ukrainian war is falling, cited one simple reason: international media do not have access. A banal example: two film crews come to Ukraine, they spend a huge budget. These two film crews sit for two to three weeks in conditional Kramatorsk, since they are not allowed anywhere. The editor-in-chief looks at all this, realizes that money is spent nowhere, and says: “Let's move to where they let it.” And they go to Gaza, or Syria, or somewhere else.
Marian Kushnir:
For me, the face of war is a woman who, on the night of February 24-25 in Kharkiv, went out on a district road, and brought warm food to the soldiers. These are women in the village of Yasnogorodka near Kiev, who quickly made sandwiches and coffee to the guys who were waiting for the Russian columns. These are doctors, these are employees of the State Emergency Service, this... Ukraine.
It is not some specific face that it is a woman or it is a man. War is a process that visually looks so scary and creepy that you can't convey it with a photo. You will not transmit the smell of rotten blood, the stench of mice. You do not transmit that nasty smell of gunpowder that is in the air every time after an attack. You will not transmit this smell of fear that reigns in all, in all to one. Even the best military man has fear, whether he admits it or not.
And this fear, perhaps, is the face of war. Fear of losing statehood. Fear of losing loved ones, relatives. It's somewhere about war. Do I have to show it? We need to. Is it necessary... Looking for ways to prove to people that this is scary and shouldn't be? We need to. Do we need to look for new ways? As practice has shown, recently it is necessary. Give us a chance, we will. As one beautiful philosopher said, give me a fulcrum, I will shift the world. Likewise, we, give us access, we will show.
Serhiy Nuzhnenko:
Sometimes I ask civilians in a bar or taxi: “And who do you see yourself in war?” Because I understand that sooner or later everyone will come to participate, either storm the landings, or, sorry, fly a drone. And some people start to subtract, and some begin, “I could be there, and that, and that.” And I wonder if the people there really realize that, or are they just trying to talk it out?
Andriy Dubchak:
The most effective thing that opposes Russia is civil society. This is Maidan. These are volunteers. This is the army. Because for me the army, if earlier it was professional soldiers who studied, underwent military training, then today the army is Kolya from the barbershop, Uncle Vasya, who drove the trolleybus, and Seryozha, a tractor driver from some village, that is, these are ordinary people. This is civil society.
Marian Kushnir:
I have stories, not frames. One of these is Sofia.
I was always afraid to take away the death of a child. For me, that would be a very strong blow. I have not seen the deaths of children and I deliberately avoid it. But I didn't think it would be so scary for me to see a child's fear of war. These eyes that look not at you, but through you. We took Sofia in our car with her mother. And this picture, when a child is waiting to be evacuated with his guinea pig, Pepa, is an important story for me.
If we talk about memorable footage with the military, then this is de-occupation. This is probably the best thing that can be shot: when the equipment with a bunch of military goes forward. It is valuable.
Photo by Marjan Kushnir
Life is more important than any set of all the values of the world, including photo cards.
Andriy Dubchak:
War is a terrible thing, but it is also about surviving. I recently selected photos that I would like to show and give to one person. And all these pictures of the many faces that survived were saved. And there is hope for them that everything will be fine.
Photo by Andriy Dubchak
Serhiy Nuzhnenko:
My memorable moments mean nothing in photographic terms. But I remembered two episodes: the exhumation in Izyum and the assault near Chromov.
When they carried out the exhumation of the military in Izyum, they did not have enough people to simply carry the bodies upstairs. That is, I first filmed this exhumation as they dig the body out of the pit, then I turned the camera over and carried this white bag upstairs.
Another moment I remember when Maryan and I went into the storming action near Chromov, there was one of our dead. I filmed him being carried and then with the military I carried this body somewhere maybe a kilometer from the battlefield to the evacuation site. No matter how hellish your hands are, you deliver a person home.
And the rest — sorry, it sounds cynical, but it's normal work.
Photo by Serhiy Nuzhnenko
Serhiy Nuzhnenko:
We, as war journalists, photographers, do not have the right to wear a pixel, as unfortunately so many of our colleagues do. And I don't understand why.
Andriy Dubchak:
It is necessary to film and record even what seems unimportant to you. Today I got a call from the military and asked if I had a video from 4 years ago with a machine gun left. “And let's make a video of him, because he died back then in the early days.”
Serhiy Nuzhnenko:
Despite the fact that we take away a lot of suffering, the killed, the blood, we must remain human. And in the same way, we have to be human to what we shoot, especially to the people who are killed.
Marian Kushnir:
You will not be able to reimagine a real war. The second duplicate does not exist.
Andriy Dubchak:
When there was a Maidan, the cry “heroes do not die” was popular.
But the heroes die. I saw corpses. I was in the morgue. I saw their families crying.
We will continue to invite professional Ukrainian photographers who have become accustomed to shooting in the open sky during explosions. But we believe that they will come here to us under the sophists and tell how everything really is. So, see you.
Discussion participants:
Marjan Kushnir— military correspondent of Radio Svoboda.
Andriy Dubchak— photojournalist, war reporter, first streamer of Euromaidan. Founder and head of the independent reporting media Donbas Frontliner.
Serhiy Nuzhnenko— military correspondent of Radio Svoboda.
Lina Zelenska— journalist, TV presenter and moderator of the meeting.
We are grateful to Work.ua for its support and assistance in strengthening Ukrainian voices.
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