Nastya Horpinchenko is staring out at the plains of Chasiv Yar, a city in eastern Ukraine, through a cracked car windscreen. “Are you scared?” asks cameraman Andriy Dubchak. “I’m always scared,” she replies.

She has good reason. Nastya, a 26-year-old investigative reporter from Ukrainian news site Slidstvo.info, is travelling with a film crew towards the front line. Their destination is just a few kilometers from where the Russian forces are advancing. 

Chasiv Yar, in the Donetsk region, is 10km west of occupied Bakhmut. It’s a strategically important area that Russia has vowed to capture. If Chasiv Yar falls, so too could the rest of Donetsk.

“I want to show the work of the military, because they are now actively holding back the offensive,” she says. “It’s scary to go, but we will be with the military and it should be safe with them. But we will be very close and if the Russians attack, they’ll shoot with everything they’ve got.”

Over several months, Foreign Correspondent has been filming with Nastya and a number of other Ukrainian women who are reporting from the front line and running regional newsrooms. While men have been mobilized for war, many women have taken on the task of reporting on it.

It’s a dangerous assignment. They’ve been under attack, evacuated from their homes and have lost loved ones. But they see their roles as critical as they continue to document the devastation the conflict has brought.

Nastya has been reporting from the front line since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago. She views herself as an eyewitness to the conflict and a recorder of something that can go missing in war: the truth.

The soldiers she meets often ask why she has come to the front line. “Some say, ‘You are as delicate as a flower; it would be safer for you to stay home, you still have children to give birth someday,'” she says.

But being a war correspondent in this conflict was an important decision for Nastya. At the beginning of the war, she considered becoming a medic or doing something more hands on. She even considered joining the army.

“But then, after about a month, I thought, ’Listen, your work is actually very valuable too.’ We have the opportunity to document some stories that may be useful for judicial processes [to document war crimes] in Ukraine later on.”

A view from the front line

Nastya arrives in Chasiv Yar to a city decimated by constant shelling. The Ukraine military quickly escort her to an underground bunker where she meets soldiers from the 93rd brigade, who are on a break awaiting their next orders.

“The emotional state of the soldiers is brutal, especially for those who have been fighting there for two years. Everyone is very exhausted and really worn out,” she says.

“They say, ‘We do not sleep. We do not have enough people … We work every day. We only got a day off today because a cluster bomb fell near us.’ And like that, his hands were shaking, his eyes were red, and he says, ‘We are barely holding on.’

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since the Russian invasion two years ago. Western intelligence officials believe the figure is far higher.

The severe strain on soldiers at the front line has forced the Ukrainian government to pass laws lowering the age of conscription from 27 to 25. The move is expected to add tens of thousands of additional troops to the military.

Nastya knows first-hand how important the additional troops will be. Her partner is a drone operator for the Ukrainian military. They both worry about each other’s safety.

“They (the soldiers) fight with the realization that they may die and you don’t know what to do about it,” she says. “It’s something that you can’t just take and change. I personally don’t have an understanding of what I could do to make things better. It’s sad also because you don’t see any kind of light at the end of the tunnel.”

Newspapers back in print

Svitlana Karpenko is walking through the rubble of a building that used to be her office. Her name is still hanging on a sign on the door. “I used to sit here,” she says, gesturing to where her desk once was.

Svitlana is the editor of Trudova Slava, the local newspaper for the town of Orikhiv in south eastern Ukraine. She was forced to leave in April 2022 with her husband and elderly mother when Russian missile attacks made it no longer safe to stay.

Like many other residents, they moved an hour away to Zaporizhzhia City. Now around a thousand people remain.

“My house and my parent’s house were destroyed,” says Svitlana. “Almost 99 per cent (of the city) is destroyed. I miss my own home; I miss what has been built throughout the years.”

Orikhiv is only a few kilometers from the front line. Russian forces have occupied villages nearby. Svitlana is determined to deliver the news to the remaining residents every couple of months, when it’s safe to travel.

She returns with printed copies of the newspaper. With no internet and unreliable electricity, in Orikhiv, getting information can be difficult. Svitlana revived the print edition of the newspaper to ensure her cut off community can read local stories and get information from the outside.

As she drives into town, the buildings that once lined the streets she played on as a child lie in ruins. “This is our life, this our reality,” she says. “And you realize that maybe we will never rebuild it.”

The remaining locals are happy to see her. One likens the newspaper delivery to “a downpour after a heatwave.”

In her old editorial office, Svitlana takes a moment to remember the life she had here. “An entire era has just been destroyed. What can I say? Only sorrow, great sorrow and pain,” she says, looking at the crumbling walls and broken windows. “I worry that it will never be the same again.”

Newsrooms at breaking point

Lesya Lazorenko is listening intently during a regular editorial meeting in the newsroom she runs in Kremenchuk, in central Ukraine. A colleague is discussing a difficult story she is covering.

“I talked to a girl who was raped by the Russian occupiers,” the reporter says. “She told me everything in great detail. I’m very worried about not causing another trauma.”

Lesya is the chief editor of the Kremenchuk Telegraph. The story she’s hearing is sadly all too familiar. She advises her colleague to talk to a psychologist. “We need to make sure that she doesn’t get hurt anymore,” Lesya says.

She worries about her reporting staff, predominantly women, who now spend a considerable amount of time talking to victims of trauma.

“It’s very important for me as an editor to understand the level of burnout of each of them,” she says. “I see tears in the eyes of journalists after the interview. I see tears in the eyes of video operators who edit material and who cannot hold themselves back.

“We are working with POWs. We are talking to women who were raped in captivity. Now we are talking to parents who have lost their children, not only on the front, but during shelling in our hometown. And it’s terrible.”

It’s very personal for Lesya. Her eldest son Bohdan could be deployed to fight at any time. Her 10-year-old daughter Yaroslava, who now spends many school days in a bomb shelter, is having nightmares. She dreams of explosions and losing her family members.

“At the age of 10 she knows the sound of an explosion; she knows what a bomb shelter is,” she says. “I’m afraid of losing my children.”

Some days the strain of keeping her family safe, her staff supported and her newspaper operational takes its toll.

“When you lead the team, I as a woman and as an editor have certain weaknesses and I close the doors of my office. I can cry sometimes. But I will cry so they do not see any of my emotions. I have to go out with a smile, to say that we are doing well, that we will handle everything.”

Source: ABC News