 There will be some images from the Mariupol Siege. They're going to be just circling around. There will be some graphic images, so I'm sorry for that. Cover. But if we're talking about war, I just want to underline the gravity of things we're talking about. It's always one of the problems of a modern media Not everyone wants to show their real, very, very tough, hard suffering because they save the viewer. But I think we need to do that. So you want to start? Yes, let's start with our journalist, Mr. Elias. We wouldn't know exactly what's happening over there. So this session is called reporting from the front lines. And we have the chance to have Mr. Slavchenov from Associated Press and Sasha Valkulina. Valkulina was the business editor from Euronews. We will listen to their story, and we will try to understand what they have they experienced, but also talk then in a second part a little bit about how important it is to have professional journalists in the war zones. And also at the end, we would like maybe to talk a little bit about what can everybody do to support those journalists, since it is crucial that those atrocities are reported. So Sasha, we will start with you. So 24th of February, this is the sad day where everything began. So what happened for you? Were you also, I mean, on a logistical side, on a local side, where have you been at that time, but also what happened in your mind? Can you share a little bit what was your situation? Please. Thank you, Jan. I wonder why the business editor is out of the microphone. You might wonder why a business editor is in the session about reporting from the front lines. I went to, I'm normally based in France. I'm Ukrainian born, raised, but for the past 11 years I've been based in France. And I was on an assignment to cover political situation in Ukraine, starting from the 13th of February. I was on that final last Air France flight, Paris-Kiev. And they stopped flying. And I was in Kiev. I was in the very central Kiev on the Maidan Square. Until then, I was supposed to fly back on the 23rd. Didn't happen. This is an open conversation. I actually had my COVID as well. So that was like the jackpot. And I stayed there. And we've heard those dates, remember, in the run-up before it started. Remember, we heard the 16th of February, the 22nd of February? OK, the 16th is over, the 22nd is over. What's happening? And it was the evening of the 23rd when the tension was absolutely palpable, specifically among the journalists in Ukraine, foreign journalists, Ukrainian journalists, to have to give it to them, amazing Ukrainian colleagues, which was the case with me. I got more indications and information in the late evening on the 23rd. Spent some time on the phone with my sources. Spent some time on the phone with my management in the newsroom. And at 4.40 in the morning on the 24th, I got a phone call from a friend who told me it started. And this was the case when, I know that's your job and just so proud to be a colleague, somehow in a wider sense of it. I did not cover conflicts before. I did not have proper experience, proper training. And that was practical, but a very, very important part for any journalist covering the war in Ukraine or any other country to be able, practically speaking, to stay as safe as possible to continue doing the job. I spent the first day of the morning, actually, the morning reporting. The first sirens on my done went off at 7.06 in the morning. And how can I say that? I did not know the sound of sirens before. Yeah, I opened the windows to be able to keep an eye on an ear on what's happening as I was packing or trying to, you know, on the phone with the newsroom. But then the sirens go off and I'm like, is that a siren? Is that how it sounds? And I know, you know, you guys are hearing doubles from all over the world. Imagine hearing the sound of a siren in Paris, on Champs-Élysées, you know, in the very center of a European capital. Imagine it be Rome, Geneva. It's not something that we are ready to do. But of course, you have to react and as a journalist you have to work. And there is no question in this case whether to go and cover, you just go and cover. The first place in my case I went to was the metro station. I quickly realized that there was no bomb shelter in the building where I was staying in and that's another problem, of course, for the people who were there. So metro, as you know, turned into all across Ukraine, metro turned into the bomb shelters. And it was important for me to go and see the people in the metro and to have a talk with them, to look them in the eyes and to see when did they come, what do they think, what do they fear? Being a Ukrainian and being there in that moment, you feel that, well, I felt the responsibility and the duty to talk also to the people. There were lots of foreign journalists as well who were doing an amazing job all over Ukraine. I broadcast for international agents, in my case, this is more than three million households rich for Euronews, but I had this luxury to go in different languages on air but to talk to the people and to understand their mentality, being a Ukrainian myself. So for me, the coverage started from the metro as practical as that and then I stayed out in the sense of I stayed in central Kiev trying to figure out how to move, where to go, how to operate, had a quick, as quick as possible a phone briefing on how to behave as a war correspondent which is not really, takes more than 15 minutes on the phone, you know, normally. And on that note, how obvious was it for you that you're gonna stay? Like, was it for your question at all? You immediately knew you're gonna be there for much longer. There was no question, the moment I got the phone, the phone call that woke me up, I checked that my batteries were charged on the equipment, I checked everything, I looked outside, I checked the my done, I checked the situation and the first thing I did, and I was isolating as well with COVID. I have to tell you, you do forget about anything, like no COVID anymore, but I was also like, oh my God, what do I do? So the first thing I did actually was the piece to camera with the backdrop to show what was happening and I filmed my done and I mentioned that this is now like exactly 4.50 in the morning, this is the my done, I'm going live now, this is the piece to camera, but there was this, you know, my done, you did see my done square, if this is the governmental, of course, area in central Kiev, you're super walking distance to the presidential administration, to the government building, everything is there. And as Kiev was the primary target in the early days, that was exactly that area that was the primary target. And it was extremely empty and you have to show that emptiness because sometimes, of course you said there are graphic pictures and they might be disturbing to some, but it's not because it's filmed that way, it's because this is the reality and it has to be there, it has to be seen. And sometimes the silence of the Kiev is four or five million people, the silence and absolutely empty streets, they speak as well as a story. I don't think I have ever seen that area that empty. Thank you very much, Sacha. Mr. Slav, you were in Mariupol when that happened, when the war broke out. So tell us, how did you get there and what did you witness when you were there? Can we turn it on? We'll just switch, yeah. Sorry, I'll get a little emotional when I speak about Mariupol, but this is very normal, so don't worry, it's just an automatic response. We actually arrived to Ukraine long before, I mean, I'm Ukrainian, so when there is a story in Ukraine, big story, I keep covering it. So we arrived months before the war started and I'm gonna stop that for a while and I'm gonna turn it on again. Months before, as Ukraine was preparing for possible invasion, and I clearly remember a resistance of people, of government officials to idea that something is gonna start. I remember press people around different cities saying, oh, you journalists are winding up this conflict, nothing's gonna happen, and so on and so forth. Even in the war started, people couldn't really believe that this is happening. But I went to Harkiv to my hometown and I went to Donbass, and what was interesting for soldiers, it was very clear already that the war is starting, and I saw a sign of relief in those who were on the front lines, because finally, after many years of, after eight years of conflict, things were called their real names, war was called war, and finally, they knew they can go forward, and they knew that the world will get its attention to Ukraine, back to Ukraine. So on 23rd, we were in Bakhmut, and we were getting the same signals from our sources, colleagues, that Russia is preparing for invasion. So we sit around the table, it was evening, we, me and two of my colleagues, we sat around the table in a small cafe and looked at each other, and we said to each other, well, the war, or probably the third world war is gonna start tomorrow or tonight. What we're gonna do, where do we want to be? And back then, we thought that if there will be invasion, it will be concentrated around Donbas, so we believe that Mariupol is gonna be a central point, a central target for the invasion, because, well, geopolitically speaking, the corridor to Crimea for Russia was very important. So we said, we looked at each other, we said, Mariupol, Mariupol, okay, let's go. And as we were going out from this cafe, the waiter asked us, will you come back? And I remember this feeling, I couldn't answer to her. And then we were driving, it was already night, we were driving to Mariupol, it's around five hours drive along the front line, and it was dark, and we saw Ukraine army preparing for something, there were trucks, with concrete blocks, there were heavy weapons, and we had this feeling that something's gonna start right now, and I remember saying to my colleague, you know, Russia's usually starting war around four o'clock in the morning, so we have like one hour left until the Third World War, no pressure, and we arrived to Mariupol around, yeah, around 3.30, and in fact, there has been address by Mr. Putin, and then explosions started, and then we saw all of these news coming from all around Ukraine, we couldn't believe that actually the whole Ukraine is being invaded, not only the Donbass, not only, and yeah, we just started live cameras, we went out on the street immediately, and I remember I was shocked that people still get on the buses, go to work, and people kept planting flowers, but that's what happens in the beginning of the war. We had our protocols, we went to hospitals, we went to military, just to check where was the, there you go, where was the injured, but first several days, I have to say, the first several days in Mariupol, they were relatively calm, the main fight was going on in Kiev, and that is the reason why most of the journalists left, because I remember speaking to my editors, they also said, well, Mr. Slav, nothing is going on in Mariupol, it's really quiet, no civilian casualties, and Kiev was just insane, insane. It was European and around, Harkiv, and we said, no, I know something is gonna happen here, we just have to wait. So paradoxically, all the journalists have left, and we just stayed there, later on I couldn't believe that we were the only three journalists, international journalists left. There was another cameraman, there was another documentary movie director, I found out about his, what happened to him later, he was also trying to leave Mariupol afterwards, and he was captured and tortured and killed in Donetsk, so I'm gonna go to that later, we were very lucky to escape and not get caught, I'm realizing this now because, well, the same thing would happen to us. Then the casualties started, then the shalings have started, the shalings have started, first children have died, again we did a lot of, I did five wars in my life, so it did feel like I know what's going on, I knew what's gonna happen, but you just cannot get used to that. One child has died, the second child has died, we concentrated our efforts around the hospital we worked in, and then the collapse started, then something strange happened. First of all, city got surrounded by military, so no one could escape, and then there was no connection, the connections disappeared, there were one or two small spots around the city where you could catch the connection, but otherwise there was nothing, and around fifth of, I think it was fifth or fourth of March, yeah, March, city collapsed completely, people started looting the shops, people started fighting each other, more injured have started coming in the hospitals, and people started to be aggressive to us, to each other, to military, it was, and I couldn't understand what's going on, why suddenly this collapse has happened? So yeah, like this day, this day I'm in a hospital, and I'm just gonna tell you a small story so you know how we operate, we're in a hospital, also no connection, no telephone connection, there was already little food, little energy, no electricity, so a soldier and one volunteer runs into the hospital, says people are looting in a huge supermarket just next to the hospital, there are several, there are several pharmacies there, we need to run there to take at least what left to bring to the hospital because the hospital was also running out of medicine, so they grab some bags and they run, and I run after them against the protocol completely, sorry, my editor is here, so I run after them, we run, there's some shelling but we're still running, and 50 meters to this shopping mall, the shell hits the roof of the shopping mall, we fall, of course my camera is off, I curse myself, I can see this huge explosion, and I know there's gonna be another one, so everyone is falling on the ground, I can see people running from that supermarket, and I see the second shell hitting the building just next to me, so we crawl to the nearby building, we hide and then we try to come back to the hospital, I'm very upset, but before that I can see people still running with computers, printers, everything from that supermarket, which is insane, but I think they also don't really realize what's going on, they just run and grab and with alcohol, very strange, like apocalyptic picture. Then the woman comes, she's trembling, and she says, my husband is injured, he's getting late, my husband is injured, he's in that building which was hit just next to me, and she said, his guts are open, it's falling out, you need to go there and take him, and the doctors say, we can't, we don't have cars, we can't go, the car fuel is starting, so she's desperate, she's crying, she's begging everyone, and I cannot go with her as well because there is a car fuel, and everyone else outside just gets shot, so she gets the wheelchair, she runs to her home, she disappears, and we kind of just give up on her, so we all are in shock, but we can't do anything, and half an hour later, she comes with her husband on the wheelchair with sheets wrapped around him, so she wrapped sheets, so his internal organs will keep him in place, and she carried him to the hospital, and he survives. I'm just telling you how the day goes, and this is every day, you cannot believe that this is going on every single day without any stopping, and then maternity hospital happened, we were quite near to it, we heard the airplane, then the airplane hit the hospital, we went up to see where the shell hit, where the bomb hit of the airplane, and then we saw the smoke, and we just drove there, and that's what we saw, you've probably seen those images, and then we were without, without electricity, we were without connection, there was one single place where you could have a connection in the city by that time, it was near one of the mobile towers, but that place was constantly bombed, so you have to go kind of hide under the stairs just to cover yourself, and just put the phone up, hope that it would not be an airstrike, because stairs would not help you against the airstrike. Then we got stuck in this hospital, we came back to the hospital, we got surrounded, we got surrounded there, we could only send images, again it was a little bit of a connection on the seventh floor, which is very dangerous because shells were hitting the roof of the hospital, so seventh floor was not an ideal place. We would just split the video file in three parts, 10 seconds and try to send from three phones for like six hours, and then the office would assemble. These are mass graves. By the way, this is a good example. Yesterday, there was a news on the Russian media, and they say they found a mass grave, this is very interesting. They claimed they found a mass grave, and they say, oh, well, we found a mass grave, it was done by the Ukrainian army, but what they didn't show that we showed this mass grave a couple months ago, the same place, and that mass grave is actually a mass grave with people who have brought to the hospital where we worked, and the children who have died in the hospital from the shellings are in that mass grave, and now you could see that same images, well, same place is shown by Russian channels with implication that those people were killed by Ukrainian military. So you could see, this is a good example of how similar images, similar places, or similar events are shown to the audience with a completely different message. So as we keep speaking during now, during Davos, we have a feeling that we are entering a new era of misinformation when it's completely irrelevant what images we show, it's completely irrelevant what materials we have, the interpretation, the fight is not for images, the fight is for interpretation of the images. Yeah, and then, well, the escape is a different story. Thank you, Mr. Slavis, this is really very intense, obviously. I will do already a little bit of a fast forward. So back to you, Sasha, you're in Kiev, so how long do you stay, and at what point do you realize that it's time for you to pack? I was packed within the first five minutes since the phone call, yeah. I imagine that you were ready to go, but when did you take that decision, and how did it feel for you? What did you have in your head? And to come to the conclusion, it's time to go. There was not my conclusion, our job, that's quite often the conclusion of your team and your editors who decided it is time to go. I stayed in Kiev for one week, and that was the week when Kiev was surrounded, there was just one way out, and if speaking in general terms when it comes to the evacuation from these things, this is such a, when it's a journalist, it's such a complex work of the team behind you. It's, you don't decide to go. It's not your decision that you decide, okay, now I think it's too dangerous, or I don't know, have something else to do, I have to go, no, we stay and cover, we do our best, but then the moment comes when your editors are telling you, okay. It's time. And then you tell them no. Yes, and then you tell them no. And they say, no, it's time. And that's the tricky part, in my case that phone call happened a week into the war, and I had the one hour notice. And I said, well, but wait, are you sure? I mean, that's okay, and I kind of, I know where I am, I know where to go, I'm feeling my little bit weird comfort zone in the sense of I was in a rather secure location, which was not revealed. So I was like, but there are stories to do, there's things to say. When millions of Ukrainians who fled the war, who left in their cases, that was the decision on instinct, you know, that's the fear. And interesting, it's impossible not to get emotional, that's absolutely sure. But for people who are not journalists who decided to leave Ukraine, I feel that you do not evacuate for yourself, you evacuate somebody you love. Everybody who left, they left because they took children out, they took their parents out, they took relatives, friends. This decision of I have to get out, if you are a civilian, comes not even saving yourself, but saving somebody you love. In our case, for journalists, it's a bit different. We stay, we cover, we do our best, but then the moment comes when the team behind us, the team in the newsroom, in the offices, they cannot be, well, you can correct me, of course, but they cannot be 100% certain and sure that this road is okay. But they can say that this evacuation itinerary and this way to take you out is for the moment the safer than what we saw of the past couple of days. So we had, and this is when they come up with very detailed and careful plans, which you follow by meters practically, because you can't really decide to take, it's a complex operation and you have a team of people working on it for days and then they decide, okay, that's it, because it might all evolve and develop in a different way. So this is some sort of a window opportunity. So that was my case. It took me three days of drive from Kiev to cross the border, the European border and the drive itself was also another experience and trying to do the job when, you know, there are also rules for security of Ukrainian forces filming when it comes to filming, obviously, and we try to respect it, but this way as well, well, that's the thing, you know, like you're there, okay, I'm on the move already, I'm being evacuated, but I'm still here and there is still a story in front of me and I can still do that story. I can still document that. I can still tell as much as I can, as long as I can do it, as long as I'm in Ukraine, for this story, I have to, so I stayed one week, three days of traveling to the border and then two more days and five days generally to come back from Kiev to France. Mrs. Lafieux, so you were in Mariupol, for you the situation got difficult. So how did, and did you decide together for you also you have to get out of there and did you have a plan? I mean, obviously editors, which I was speaking to and they were concerned about our security, especially after the widespread attack on us as a journalist, information attack, exposing our names and blaming us for lying, for showing unrealistic images. So we knew that there has been a campaign against associate press against us personally and we were just waiting for the opportunity to leave. But then again, we got stuck in this hospital, we got surrounded at some points, you could see that this is a vacation. One day we just found us ourselves to be surrounded by Russian forces and then police broke us out. We were just running through the battlefield hiding and we were able to escape but we had to leave our car behind. So we found ourselves in the last days before left the city, we found ourselves just without a car, which is very hard to cover the war without being able to move freely. And by that time, Mariupol was shelled so frequently that the airstrike was happening every five minutes. You could just hear airplanes all the time. So actually going out, even going out from the basement was a challenge, you have to kind of force yourself to suppress the fear, run out, do what you can and run back, that's, so while we were waiting for solutions to evacuate, to try to find a different car we were filming and that was also quite intense because there was already no, I mean, just one hospital was working and then people were just lying on the streets dead. But we managed to agree with the local family to evacuate, so we went out with them and we were very lucky. There was just first days of evacuation when things got messy. Civilians were just running out, driving hundreds, thousands of cars. So we got through 15 checkpoints, 15 Russian checkpoints unnoticed. We were just hiding our materials where we could. You know, our producer was, we always tell that story. Our producer was hiding a micro SD card with important material in tampon. So, you know, we did what we could. And we, yeah, we got through. And the day after, we knew that the Mariupol theater, drama theater got bombed. So we were very conflicted. We felt guilty that we were not there because we knew people there, we knew that drama theater and we regretted we couldn't be there but we also realized that next days when people were leaving, they were thoroughly checked on every checkpoint. Men were untressed and all the telephone numbers, all the telephones, all the computers were checked. So we were very lucky to get out. Thank you, Mr. Saff. We are already running out of time and obviously we could spend much more time. But I think I wanted to quickly still take the time to talk about what I mentioned in the beginning. So what do you think needs to happen to protect journalists better in war zones and what can all of us do to make that happen? Oh, so many things to do. I mean, the whole misinformation thing, I think it will be very hard to fight the new reality. We can try and the way to do it is to rely, again, I remember conversations around newsrooms. We had the impression several years ago that our profession becomes irrelevant slowly because there are so many people with phones, they're all filming and they are probably always there before you. But then when misinformation started to be, it always was an issue, but it's when it started to be an issue which started wars, which made the start of war possible, then we understood, again, slowly, we understood that actually the journalism by trusted journalists, by trusted sources, by based on facts is becoming, again, very important because people just don't know who to trust. So this is, you know, I'm just thinking what would happen, what would be if there was no one in Marjupal if we would be evacuated, if we would evacuate immediately. So someone trustworthy has to be there. And that brings me to a point when actually we have to kind of protect or at least be sure that all of the sides of the conflict follow similar accepted norms against the journalists. This anti-journalist campaigns should stop and journalists should work. I mean, this is, again, this is utopia. Of course, in a war, there will always be a danger to a life of the journalist. There are probably one journalist per three days dying right now in Ukraine. Around 30 journalists have already died. But at least we have to make sure that there are some standards followed by all sides of the conflict which will give a chance to a journalist to work without fear of being arrested and placed into jail, a fear of that a wire's gonna be attached to his body parts and, you know, he will be put on camera and recorded that everything I did is not true, you know, or my apologies to someone. We just, I just want to be, I know this is almost impossible, but I dream that someday this is gonna happen, you know, that we're gonna have this. Like a Red Cross maybe, or, I don't know, OSCE. Sasha. Whoever can help do something about it, please do. I mean, that's, the other thing, as Mr. Stav said, of course there is the war and is any conflict zone there could be casualties and we understand that these casualties could also be among the media. Well, what we're seeing here as well and as is that journalists are specifically targeted. That's another extreme of the whole situation. We're not talking about the casualty of somebody doing the job on assignment filming, you know, doing the job and it happens next. No, we're talking about journalists being specifically targeted. Their names are being on the list and being spread. Their photos, their details. Of course it's utopian, of course this is the perfect world when journalists are allowed to do their job, but I mean, if we don't, you know, it's these little things, if we don't kind of at least keep raising that and keep doing at least small steps towards that, that utopia would never be here as much as possibly realistic. That's, what can we all do? Of course there are organizations and they can do that. The journalists will just keep doing their job. The editors will keep doing their job. We will be doing our best, but also these pictures that you're seeing now, I know they're disturbing. I know you might find it very emotional, but I believe we have to see them. Because when you see this, and I know how it works, this is, I mean, this is obviously the footage, but I know there's even worse. Whatever's happening now in Mariupol is not filmed and in other places as well. Watch this. Acknowledge the, as audience, you know, as people we work for as well, acknowledge the reality and the importance of showing this reality. Because this may be, maybe I'm being very optimistic, but this will also help build this pressure to ultimately improve the situation for journalists to cover, to be able to give the really reliable fact-checked information. Thank you, Sasha. Thank you so much, Mrs. Slav and Sasha, for sharing this, I can imagine, difficult experience. And I mean, thank you for courage and thank you for sharing this, sometimes very, as you said, disturbing images and for bringing them out to the world. It's so important. So I hope that maybe in January to see you again and hopefully in the situation has changed. Can only hope that. If the war stops, yeah. So thanks for the audience. Thank you again for doing that. And yeah, see you in January again. Thank you. Thank you.