A week before Russia started its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, I was working as a local producer for a British TV channel.
Sitting in a nice restaurant in Mariupol, my colleagues and I discussed potential scenarios for how the invasion would play out. In general, the conversation boiled down to the phrase “it could be a shitshow of a battle” and the fact that today, even the most experienced military correspondents have never dealt with a confrontation between conventional, well-equipped armies.
The war that is now ravaging Ukrainian cities is a new challenge for everyone who works in the media. Experience of previous conflicts is almost irrelevant. After 24 February, the security expert we were working with returned home to Ireland for a few days: he realised that all his security protocols for journalists needed to be revised. None of his previous work – Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan – was adequate to guide journalists on how to act in the midst of two European armies fighting a ground and air war.
