{"id":2265,"date":"2022-03-31T12:00:39","date_gmt":"2022-03-31T12:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2022\/03\/31\/ukraine-war-reporting-zelensky-putin\/"},"modified":"2024-10-29T20:28:04","modified_gmt":"2024-10-29T20:28:04","slug":"ukraine-war-reporting-zelensky-putin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2022\/03\/31\/ukraine-war-reporting-zelensky-putin\/","title":{"rendered":"A view of Ukraine, from an America journalist who has made his life there"},"content":{"rendered":" \n
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Veteran U.S. newspaper journalist Brian Bonner has given the last 14 years of his career to Ukraine. As the longtime editor of the Kyiv Post, an English-language newspaper in the country\u2019s capital, he directed a staff of reporters who wrote about everything from Kyiv\u2019s nightlife and food scene to the 2014 EuroMaiden Revolution that overthrew Russian-backed President Viktor Yanukovych, triggering the start of Russia\u2019s ongoing war. The newspaper also did groundbreaking work investigating governments and oligarchs from its start in 1995 all the way up to current President Volodymyr Zelensky.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Bonner was born in Wisconsin, graduated from high school in South Dakota and has a degree in history from the University of Minnesota. He spent 20 years as a local reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press in Minnesota and also filed stories from Russia, Belgium, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Laos, Norway, Poland and the United Kingdom, before finding his way to and falling in love with Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Brian Bonner<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div> \n
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His 14-year leadership of the Kyiv Post ended last November after the newspaper\u2019s owner fired the entire 50-member staff, suspended operations for a short period, then restarted with new employees. Many of the refugees from the former Post launched their own Web start-up, The Kyiv Independent<\/a>, where they\u2019re covering the war \u2014 some from the front lines, some from other parts of Ukraine. (As of this week, the Kyiv Independent had 2 million followers on Twitter.)<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Bonner, 62, now works as an editor at Geopolitical Intelligence Services<\/a>, a think-tank that studies and writes about contemporary global issues.  A consummate newsman, he is now without a newsroom, left watching the biggest story of his career play out around him. He says he\u2019s proud of the Independent editors and reporters he trained through his time at the Post, but acknowledges he\u2019d love to be with them again, leading coverage of a war that looks to be headed to a prolonged stalemate.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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I worked with Brian decades ago at the St. Paul Pioneer Press in Minnesota, and have followed his career with interest since both of us left. I\u2019ve been worried about him ever since Russia invaded Ukraine five weeks ago and continues its efforts to take the capital city of Kyiv. So, I was especially grateful that I was able to reach him and he took time to talk. I asked how he\u2019s faring physically and emotionally, his thoughts about news coverage of the war and what stories he thinks most need to be told. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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First, are you staying safe?
<\/strong>I\u2019ve been in and out of Kyiv for the last month. Currently I\u2019m safe. The train runs every day from where I am to Kyiv. My ex-wife and my daughter are safe for now; they were in a bomb shelter in Kharkiv but recently relocated to southern Ukraine. (Editor\u2019s note: We are not disclosing Bonner\u2019s location to protect his safety. He faces particular risk as an American and a journalist who has criticized Vladimir Putin\u2019s actions in Ukraine.)<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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If you were still running the Kyiv Post, how would you be covering the war?
<\/strong>The same way we covered the revolution and the start of Russia\u2019s war in 2014. We didn\u2019t know until the end how the revolution was going to turn out, whether Ukraine was going to win or lose. But you can go to a Reuters story today and it\u2019s still called a \u201cRussian operation.\u201d This isn\u2019t about \u201cbreakaway republics,\u201d it isn\u2019t about \u201cseparatist republics\u201d \u2014 it\u2019s a straight-up Russian invasion that started in 2014. And they don\u2019t call it that.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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I wouldn\u2019t have left our newsroom. If I were there, I don\u2019t think I\u2019d do anything differently than the journalists who are covering this. We\u2019d do it from our unique vantage point as the hometown newspaper, the capital newspaper in the country that\u2019s being attacked. I\u2019ve been dreaming of headlines, front pages, because I\u2019m an old print guy. Part of me feels like an amputee because I just don\u2019t have that outlet anymore, or the staff, or the printed newspaper, or the website to update, or the stories to edit or the coverage to plan.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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\"Brian
Kyiv Post chief editor Brian Bonner, right, and his staff in the newsroom of the Kyiv Post in 2017, when several were targeted by Russian hackers. AP Photo\/Volodymyr Petrov<\/small><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div> \n
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Have you talked to your former colleagues who are covering the invasion?
<\/strong>The demolition of the Kyiv Post by the owner couldn\u2019t have happened at a worse time. I\u2019m very glad my colleagues stayed together at The Kyiv Independent. They\u2019re much younger. All of them are bilingual, tech-savvy \u2014 an amazing generation of people that I was able to hire and mentor. They dispersed for safety reasons but they\u2019re still kicking ass. And to be honest, the Twitter feed is everything in times of fast-moving stories. They jumped from nothing on their Twitter feed to 2 million. They\u2019ve become the go-to news service. They\u2019ve raised $75,000 in monthly membership pledges and have a GoFundMe campaign that has raised $1.5 million. Some have stayed very close to the front lines, but the front line moves and shifts, so it\u2019s dangerous. They\u2019ve done it with classic beat reporting: Some reporters are handling the refugee crisis at the border, some are handling the military, others are monitoring what Zelensky is doing, still others are covering the diplomatic side, and so forth.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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They\u2019re massively overworked; I\u2019ve tried not to bother them. They don\u2019t have a printed newspaper, so it\u2019s a website, a daily newsletter and their must-go-to Twitter feed. I know from managing during COVID that it was a huge challenge to go from a newsroom to remote. But in that way, COVID provided a great lesson: You can still pull together with a little extra effort and manage people who are dispersed all over the nation or even abroad.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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When I was editor of the Post, we had a policy for covering the revolution and war: You were never forced to go to the front lines.<\/p>\u2014Brian Bonner<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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How would you balance the need to protect your reporters with the need to tell this story?
<\/strong>When I was editor of the Post, we had a policy for covering the revolution and war: You were never forced to go to the front lines. It was voluntary, and we had enough journalists who wanted to volunteer. You have to not be cowboys, not send people out to their doom, and we never did that. And thank God we never had injuries in the revolution or war, despite the fact that thousands of people got killed and hundreds of people got hurt.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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What do you think of the Western media coverage so far?
<\/strong>I\u2019m proud of what the journalists are doing here. The human angles are everywhere. But the larger picture is that we have a 21st<\/sup>-century genocide against the Ukrainian people, against the Ukrainian state. I\u2019m upset that officialdom is standing aside, treating it in some ways like a reality TV show. If we stand aside and allow this genocide to go forward, how is this going to look to the future of humankind? Do we say we didn\u2019t intervene forcefully because Ukraine is not a member of NATO, so we didn\u2019t have a legal obligation? There\u2019s a moral obligation, I think, to save Ukrainians.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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If you get translations of Putin\u2019s remarks, he sounds like an enraged Hitler. Ukraine is a democratic, peaceful country that is being punished just because it wants to keep its own statehood. There are people who oddly, at this late date, are apologists, trying to get us to understand Putin\u2019s point of view. He has no legitimate point of view on this. That\u2019s the frustration I feel when I watch some of the coverage.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Brian Bonner on covering Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky<\/h2>\n \n
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Zelensky was very thin-skinned. He didn\u2019t tolerate criticism well. I heard that he gave the blessing for closing (the Post) down and demanding that the owner fire everybody.\n<\/p>\n

\nThat said, he\u2019s doing what a president needs to do in a time of war. He\u2019s staying with his people, he\u2019s motivating them, and I like this combination of shaming the West and being openly critical of how little Ukraine is being helped, yet at the same time recognizing that Ukraine is very, very dependent on its friends \u2014 the U.S., Great Britain, Poland and so forth. People are tested by crises and he is passing this one with more political courage than I see from most leaders around the globe.\n<\/p>\n

\nBut before, he was quite arrogant; he thought he knew better than journalists. Because he was a very popular entertainer, he got elected with the help of a lot of people you\u2019d call reformers, progressive reformers. Then he ditched them within six months. He was declining in the polls and people were not seeing progress in the fight against corruption. After winning the election with 70 percent of the vote, he had become very unpopular.\n<\/p>\n

\nOne of his chiefs of staff early on, who either quit or got fired, said we don\u2019t need the media; we just go over your heads. They were dictating who would go on political talk shows; his prosecutors would harass the Kyiv Post. There were other incidents. He was very contemptuous of investigative reporters, and openly so. So he was hardly a model president before the war.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n \n

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What about the context?
<\/strong>There\u2019s still not a true understanding of the evil that Vladimir Putin poses to the free world. Some people still think, ah, let him have Ukraine, then it\u2019ll end at NATO\u2019s border. Not gonna happen, guys. So wake up to that, stop him now, when he can be stopped more easily. The other thing is they say is that sanctions don\u2019t work. Well, sanctions don\u2019t work because they\u2019re not severe enough. If you actually flipped the switch and disconnected the Russian economy from the world, and that means shutting off the oil and gas, he cannot fund his war machine.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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We saw sanctions, very weak ones, rolled out after the Crimean invasion in 2014. They weren\u2019t enforced. I don\u2019t think the coverage has really reflected that.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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What should the Western media be doing more of to hold people\u2019s attention?
<\/strong>They need to stay on the story. We\u2019ve seen some great investigations of assets. But in the short term it\u2019s not about that. This is our moral test of the 21st<\/sup> century. Are we going to fail it again like we did with the Syrians, or are we going to pass it? Ukrainians are being killed just for being Ukrainian. That\u2019s genocide, and it has to be stopped.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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When you say stay on the story, what do you mean?
<\/strong>It takes enormous resources and energy, and there\u2019s fatigue. It\u2019s a marathon, and we\u2019re now a month-plus into the active, full-scale invasion. As an American who\u2019s made his life in Ukraine, I really hope Americans stay interested. I hope that they keep the moral obligation. There\u2019s more than enough Ukrainian men and, actually, foreign fighters now to turn the tide. We need to understand the effects of this in the long term, in terms of alliances and the economy and reorienting our economies away from autocrats.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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What should the media and reporters do to have this story heard above the daily din? Do we just keep filing stories and images and hope people pay attention, or is there something more to be done?
<\/strong>That\u2019s a good question. I don\u2019t know what more journalists can do. I think journalists are saints. They work way too hard and take too many risks.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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The larger global struggle is over a free press, and that\u2019s part of why Ukraine has been attacked by Putin. Ukraine certainly had big corruption problems, including in President Volodymyr Zelensky\u2019s administration. And Zelensky is partly to blame for telling people that he didn\u2019t believe there was going to be a full-scale invasion up until the week it happened. That led to a lot of complacency.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Ukraine is still relatively free, especially when you compare it to China, when you compare it to Russia, when you compare it to Belarus. This is where we need global support for journalism. And I think in crises like these we have to get resources to journalists who are able to get the story out. It\u2019s illegal right now in Russia to call this a war. But Russians have internet; they can choose to find out the truth. Unfortunately, and this is even the case with some of my former friends in Russia, many buy into Putin\u2019s lying with absolutely no concept of reality.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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How are reporters getting access to people in Ukraine and how are they staying safe?
<\/strong>Access in Ukraine has been pretty good because there have been so many changes in governments,  so it\u2019s never been a huge problem getting to people in power. The administration holds a lot of off-the-record briefings. It\u2019s not like the Kremlin. Officials are all on Twitter or available on their cellphones. It\u2019s a very open country \u2014 maybe too open. They had to crack down a little bit because journalists were getting too close to the front lines and there was a warning about the risk of tipping off the Russian enemy. One of the few times some censorship is valid is during war.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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As for Ukrainian citizens, they are by and large a pretty open people; they\u2019ll tell you their story.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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What news sources are you relying on for coverage?
<\/strong>First and foremost I rely on my former colleagues, now at The Kyiv Independent. But that said, The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Economist, Atlantic Magazine, Financial Times \u2014 they\u2019re all over this story. I don\u2019t live a day without CNN. Heaven forbid we lose our internet and TV and cellphones.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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There are a lot of stories that would be huge front-page news but they get lost in the war. One of them is that Ukraine\u2019s electricity grid was hooked to Russia\u2019s. But now, fortunately, the grid has been disconnected from Russia and reconnected to the European grid. That\u2019s a big, big deal and huge advancement in security, in the electricity market and the energy market.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Are there stories that are being missed or undercovered?
<\/strong>Stories aren\u2019t being missed, especially about what\u2019s happening in Ukraine and on the battlefront. But the bigger stories are the ones that are being told on the business desks, by the investigative teams, in the political arena. Those are taking place all over the world, in Brussels, in Washington, Berlin, Moscow and Berlin. You don\u2019t need to be in Ukraine to tell this story. Even to interview Ukrainians now, you don\u2019t need to be in Ukraine. Ten percent of the country has left.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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The West moves slowly, but once it\u2019s unified it does have power. Yet coverage shows that NATO is still a very timid organization. I don\u2019t think Putin will ever use nuclear weapons, but this notion that the West is telling Putin what it will do and won\u2019t do is kind of ridiculous.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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As for stories that need more attention: How Putin\u2019s money and the autocrats\u2019 money have corrupted politics in the Western countries. Those are the big stories that can be done wherever you are in the globe. South Dakota became a leader of these blind trusts, where they\u2019re not required to reveal who owns them, who got the money, anything. It\u2019s just money laundering.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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What news organizations are doing a really bad job of covering this?
<\/strong>I won\u2019t watch him, but I know that Tucker Carlson on Fox is the poster child of Putin appeasers: Oh, let\u2019s try to understand Putin, give him an off-ramp.<\/em> The guy doesn\u2019t WANT an off-ramp. I was asked to go on Fox twice by Sean Hannity and I didn\u2019t respond. I don\u2019t think you can argue with a guy whose whole platform is based on misinformation and supporting Donald Trump.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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This is our moral test of the 21st century.<\/p>\u2014Brian Bonner<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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I think the hottest place in journalism hell goes to those who spread Kremlin propaganda \u2014 that there are bioweapons labs in Ukraine, that Ukraine was developing nuclear bombs, Ukraine is full of Nazis. This is such garbage that no journalists who run down the facts would repeat them. Even though it\u2019s only Ukraine fighting, with Western supplies, it is a World War III in the sense that everyone has to choose up sides: Ukraine or Russia? If you choose neutrality, that\u2019s taking Russia\u2019s side.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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And who\u2019s doing the best coverage?
<\/strong>The people who write most insightfully keep history in mind: Timothy Snyder, Anne Applebaum, Garry Kasparov, Diane Francis. And Illia Ponomarenko,<\/a> who has become internationally famous, went to the University of Mariupol, which now is in ruins. Illia is funny despite the war. He was tweeting at 3 in the morning \u2014 \u2018fucking Russians, stop your artillery! I\u2019m trying to get some sleep here!\u2019<\/em> He\u2019s got a million Twitter followers last I checked. He\u2019s the front-line guy, the military guy. He bought an apartment in the northwest suburbs of Kyiv, which was also the center of the battle, and lost it in the shelling. He wrote a piece \u2014 Is the front line moving forward or back?<\/em> \u2014 and, as only Illia could do because he\u2019s so well-sourced and is actually on the ground, gave us a very good state of play about whether Kyiv was going to fall. It was very nuanced. It was like community journalism. So that\u2019s the one that stuck out because I\u2019m a Kyiv resident. I own property here. I have my life invested in Kyiv. And, dammit, I want to know if I will still have a home or I\u2019m going to be bombed in my bed or whatever.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Postscript: <\/strong>After our conversation, Bonner sent this link to a New Yorker podcast<\/a> and a perspective story from The Kyiv Independent<\/a> that he recommends for further understanding of the situation in Ukraine. Then he added this personal note: \u201cThanks for the time. Remember, if I die, I died doing what I want, where I want, with whom I want\u2026nothing better in life.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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