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Since Russian men are banned from entering Ukraine, reports from the frontline in Russian independent media are mostly written by women journalists. Here are their stories.

Elena Kostyuchenko

Former journalist at Novaya Gazeta and former special correspondent at Meduza. Author of the book “I Love Russia: Reporting from a Lost Country”. Winner of several journalistic awards.

Journalism is essentially a very ecological profession. You go out into the field, collect information, which can be really disturbing, but then once you write it all down that internal lived experience transforms into letters on the page. The moment the text comes out, it’s already something wholly separate from you. In general, if you then sleep for a day, you should be ready to immerse yourself into something new. Unwritten texts are the worst. I haven’t come around to writing about my most recent, incredibly difficult trip to Ukraine — and it has been eating me up inside this whole time. That’s how a reporter’s memory works: it all stays with you until you write up the story. Only afterwards can you let yourself forget.

During my last assignment, I spoke with a Ukrainian nurse who was working under Russian occupation in Kherson. Russian soldiers had come to her to get their wounds dressed. She had ripped one soldier’s bandages off in a way to inflict pain on him. She was shaking as she told me about this. It was clear that it was the first time in her life she had done anything like that. And for her, as a nurse, it was unbearable to think about.

Journalists are professional outsiders. We don’t live a real life like normal people. We’re here today, there tomorrow. Usually, our lives are much easier than the lives of the people we encounter. That’s why judgment is the worst thing journalism can do. We should help people recognize and understand one an-other, not judge each other.

It’s actually easier for women journalists to work during wartime. It may not be obvious, but it’s true. War is a concentration of patriarchal culture, its manifestation. No one takes women seriously during war. We always look like someone’s relative, bride or nurse. That’s why we can access spaces where men aren’t allowed in and we’re entrusted with things that men can’t be trusted with. No one’s afraid of us — and that’s absolutely crucial because in war when you’re feared, you get shot.

I have a lowered physical response to fear. This is very inconvenient in regular life: for example, when I cross the street, I need to consciously calculate the speed of driving cars — I have no automatic reaction to danger. This does, however, let me report from dangerous situations.

In all the time that I was traveling, there were only two instances when I couldn’t cope with acute fear. I was working in the Donbas, on both sides of the front, but these two instances happened when I was on the territory of the unrecognized republics. One time was at Mine 6-7, near Horlivka. I couldn’t get back to the city because of the curfew, so I spent the night in the mine’s former office, where a unit from the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic was stationed. At some point, the mine office came under mortar fire. One of the artillery shells hit the first floor and wounded a boy, but I just couldn’t find a place to stand during the shelling.

According to the rules, you’re supposed to stand near a load-bearing wall with no windows or tiles. I didn’t understand which walls were load-bearing and was rushing up and down a hallway. The company commander’s wife came out, saw the state I was in, and brought me into her room, where her daughter was playing with dolls. I realized that you can’t be afraid in front of children. So I also grabbed a doll, and we played until the shelling stopped.

This other time, I was working a source — a Russian commander. I knew that they were fighting on the frontlines, and I really wanted to get there so that I could report personally on what it was like. [The editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta Dmitry] Muratov called me — he could always sense when something was off. I told him that I was sick, but that there was also this opportunity to be at the storming of Vuhlehirsk. He told me, "No, just go home". Some time later, while working on a different assignment, I passed by a blackened field and asked what it was. "Vuhlehirsk used to be here", I was told. In that field, I had the distinct sensation that I could have died there. If I had chosen to go with the troops that night, I would have died.

The thing that irritates me most is the phrase, "Well, that’s war". People think that war is like a natural disaster. No, it’s not a natural disaster, it’s mutual mass murder. Why is it that when one person kills another with a knife or pistol, we call him a murderer and send him to prison, but when people try to kill each other in the name of their governments, it’s somehow okay? The main thing is that they shouldn’t torture each other, but the killing is allowed because it is, after all, a war. I don’t understand how we can put up with this and why most war reporting is written in that tone of "well, it’s a war". I don’t know how to write in a way that calls this acceptance of war into question. I don’t want my writing to be weaponized. I want my writing to force people to lay down their arms, but I don’t understand how to do so.

Taisia Bekbulatova

Former special correspondent at Meduza, editor-in-chief at independent media outlet “Holod”

I was only able to fully reflect on what was happening a long while after the start of the full-scale war. I think that having work during a time like this is a blessing. You don’t really let yourself think, you just work, and you devote all your free time to trying to do something useful, something that will help inform people and expand their understanding of current events.

The start of the war was a particularly difficult experience. Of course, it’s hard to even compare that to what people in Ukraine were going through at the time. All the same, I was restless, I felt like I needed to do something, to have some sort of impact on what was happening. I was in Tbilisi, a gorgeous city, everything around me was peaceful. I didn’t understand how to align my internal state with conditions on the outside. It was only when I arrived in Kyiv that I managed, despite the sirens, to sleep peacefully for the first time in a long while. One night, during another bombing, my colleagues got really worried trying to find me, but I had just been asleep, it hadn’t even woken me up.

I’ve been on pins and needles since February 24 [2022]. There was this sense that someone needed to go to Ukraine. Ukraine obviously wasn’t letting in men with Russian citizenship, but women journalists could get in. Though even for us, it was a real challenge. I spent around five hours waiting at the border. We made calls to anyone we could, explained the situation, and tried to convince them to let me in.

Only once in Ukraine was I treated differently because of being Russian. It was during a conversation at an excavated grave. I had been going around, covering the war crimes committed in the Kyiv region when it was under Russian occupation. They were digging up the bodies of murdered people in front of me. One elderly man had run out of his home and tried to block the road against advancing Russian columns. He died a horrific death, his head run over by a tank. I spoke with his adult son, asked him to send me any photos he had of his father — I wanted to include them in my reporting. I gave him my contact information and seeing my Russian phone number, he naturally tensed up. He asked me whether I was a provocateur and promised to confiscate my phone if I was. I explained to him, calmly, that I was indeed from Russia, but that I had come as a journalist to write about the war.

A bit later, standing on the same spot, a European colleague approached and started asking me questions. I told her my story: who I was and how I had gotten there. The man I’d spoken to earlier was standing nearby and overheard our conversation. He came up to me and said something along the lines of "good job". This touched me to my very core: you’re experiencing such grief, Russia has attacked your country, and yet you’re telling a Russian journalist that she’s doing a good job.

Now this might be a rather unpopular opinion, but I’m convinced of one thing: when journalists stop thinking about objectivity, about fact-checking; when they start writing things mechanically, attributing all the evil to one side and all the good to another — they’re doing everyone a disservice. When we do that we hurt ourselves, the truth, and history. I can’t get on board with people who say that impartial journalism is impossible in times of war. Sure, maintaining impartiality is difficult, but that’s a different issue. It’s a huge challenge, but trying to preserve it is our duty as journalists.

Journalists need to distance themselves — put up a transparent wall between themselves and what they’re reporting on. I try to do this — sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Everyone has their own soft spot, things that you cannot process with your brain, but go straight to the heart. That’s the case with me and anything that has to do with animals. The first story that really pierced my armor — it sounds absurd, considering all the horrors, but I admit it — was about a cat who had been left behind in an apartment after his owners fled from advancing Russian troops. This cat starved to death in a child’s crib.

If I were to make a rational decision, I would choose to assimilate in the country where I currently live: find some work, have children, get a few cats. But I don’t see this as an option for myself. My identity is firmly tied to Russia. I can’t see myself outside of that bond and any attempt to sever it would be destructive for me. I can’t exist in a situation where I’ve banished Russia from my life.

Lillia Yapparova

Special correspondent at Meduza, investigative reporter. Worked in Ukraine

On February 24, my alarm woke me up to go to the airport, no one had called me. I was supposed to fly to Kyiv — we were planning to report on how Kyivans were preparing for a possible war that would maybe never start. I’d scheduled interviews with families whose children had, for several months, been practicing how to evacuate in case of rocket strikes. And also with businessmen who weren’t sure how to pivot their businesses in case a war suddenly broke out. But then at work they said "What airport? The airspace is closed".

So I just opened my file and started calling all of the people in Kyiv with whom I had interviews lined up. Some were bundling up their kids, some were packing their backpacks. A few admitted to me "Lilia, my attitude toward you changed overnight, understand?" I heard the words "May you all be damned" a few times. You stay patiently silent — you have this skill, it’s like calling people who have just lost someone in a plane crash, or arriving at a funeral with a camera, something every journalist has experienced often enough in their lifetime. But my hands were shaking for three days straight afterward. Once on assignment, though, nothing was shaking anymore.

On the seventh or tenth day of being in Kyiv we recorded a podcast. For the first time since the start of the war, I cried — and it happened while I was on the air. The host said, "Lil, but you’ve always wanted to go cover a war". I reproached myself so much for wanting to go experience the war, because it meant a war needed to break out. But I had really wanted to experience it — I had thought it was possibly the coolest thing in the world of journalism. But when you see it all up close, you become disgusted by the thought that you had at some point wanted this.

In Ukraine, I was alone, without a car, without any money, without the ability to legally rent an apartment — and if I had let slip anything about my Russian passport anywhere, I would have had major problems. I had to keep the incoming flow of impressions under close control. It was only when I left somewhere, after filing a story or making it out of a shelled city, that I allowed myself to relax, to cry. I was in besieged Chernihiv. There was no water, no medicine. Every tree was riddled with holes. In Chernihiv, I saw a bomb shelter located under one of the city’s elementary schools. When I went down there, I found myself in the dark with 400 people — and all of them were talking. Because of the basement’s acoustics, I heard everything. And I could also smell different odors: "Mivina," a type of food that’s quick to prepare; the dampness; the rot; the sweat; and something medicinal. I lay down and felt for the first time that I couldn’t cope with the flow of incoming information. I kept working out of inertia, like a dictaphone, trying to remember everything.

In the morning my friend called me, a volunteer who had gotten me into Chernihiv. "You need to leave urgently, Russian troops are occupying the city." Nobody’s phones were really working, it was a miracle that his call had gotten through. I informed the volunteers, and we went to the hospital — doctors are always the first to get information from the armed forces. We walked the hospital corridors and realized that the rumor that the city was being shut down was literally spreading with us, no one else knew anything yet. The last route out of the city was a narrow footbridge with heart-shaped locks.

Leaving Chernihiv felt frightening and shameful: so many people remained there, and I couldn’t understand where I had obtained this privilege — to leave. I literally ran to this bridge. There were really loud booms. Russian troops were trying to blow up absolutely everything — they were even shooting people who were trying to escape on little boats after all the bridges had been destroyed. I was among the last to leave Chernihiv until the Russian encirclement was completely lifted.

I live in Riga now. It’s a very, very quiet city. On my first night here I stepped out to go to the pharmacy — for some reason, I decided late in the evening that I should go get some medicine. I went outside, and there was no one on the street. Then I became paranoid. I thought, "these streets have been cleared out because of me, there’s going to be some kind of attack now".

Anyone who has ever been under shelling describes experiencing a reaction to sounds — I had that too, when you wake up because something fell in your neighbor’s apartment. Even though in Kyiv, I had slept through the sirens. I’ve also stopped watching my favorite shows that have grotesque violence, things like "The Boys" on Amazon. I’ve developed a sense of aesthetic contradiction: Why even show this? It’s not real.

I don’t know anything about the frontlines. There are still a billion other situations where I could have ended up, a billion situations where I might not have survived. The career of a war correspondent is an endless test. I also realized that since I managed to brazenly force myself to not be afraid, it probably means that I need to keep going.