Podcast: "It was almost an insult"
Yaroslav Trofimov on war reporting from home
Yaroslav Trofimov (right) and photographer Manu Brabo (left) in Maryinka after a Russian artillery barrage
Straight after covering the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul in August 2022 and following weeks laid low with Covid, war reporter Yaroslav Trofimov asked his employer - The Wall Street Journal - to send him home. To Kyiv. In January 2022.
“I was clear at the time that Ukraine would be invaded,” he told me. “The war seemed imminent. And as someone who was born in Ukraine, who grew up there as a child, and who speaks the languages, it seemed to me that my place was there, and I couldn't just not cover it … It was almost an insult. I had this feeling of: how dare they! This is not a war zone … This was the hospital where I was taken as a kid to fix my eyes, and it's overflowing with the wounded. And this is the botanical garden where I had my first kiss as a teenager, and suddenly there are soldiers around it, and there are air-raid sirens, and the streets are empty”.
In his new book - Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence (published today in the US by Penguin Press and on 18 January in the UK) - Trofimov, the Journal's Ukraine-born chief foreign affairs correspondent, mixes history and first-hand reporting to recount the opening 12 months of the full-scale invasion. Find out who it was who tipped him off that the invasion was coming within hours, about the experience of having Yevgeny Prigozhin as a contact, and his insight into Ukraine’s controversial pre-war militia groups.
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When the war ends, will Ukrainians treat Volodymyr Zelensky the same way the British did Winston Churchill, I asked him. “Nobody in Ukraine is fighting for Zelensky. Zelensky is the face of Ukraine abroad. People have to personify the resistance and he did a great job campaigning for Ukraine. But people are fighting for Ukrainian independence, for the right to replace Zelensky if need be, in an election. That will happen after the war … And people also remember the mistakes that he made before the war. But people do recognise that he did not flee. He displayed courage by staying in Kyiv when it seemed like it was falling and when … all the foreign partners were urging him to leave. And he did a good job in securing international support for Ukraine, in part by using his skills to speak over the heads of politicians to the electorate in the US, the UK and other countries. Once the war is over and there is a political campaign, people will be discussing the merits of whether he should or shouldn’t go. If you look at the history of Ukraine after … independence in 1991, only one president has been re-elected”.
We read that the allies want Ukrainian forces to adopt a defensive posture in readiness for a settlement that delivers a strategic victory but loss of territory. Off the record, can Ukrainian officials accept that? “I think, no. I think the fear in Ukraine, not just among officials but in the public at large is that once Russia swallows this part of Ukraine, it’ll only whet its appetite for the next one. Salami tactics. They got one bit in 2014, they will get another bit now and then … What you really hear from people is: I would rather have this war last another year or two years than have my children or grandchildren have to fight again.
Do they understand that, if Donald Trump is re-elected, they lose American support? “Yes. When the war started, Ukraine didn't have much support either. The US embassy had closed, heavy weapons were refused, and everyone assumed that the Russians would take over … If President Trump is elected or even if he's not elected, as far as Russia is concerned - as far as Vladimir Putin is concerned - they want all of Ukraine. Why would they stop? Putin said a few weeks ago that Odesa is a Russian city. Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president and the head of Putin's party, said that Kyiv is a Russian city that should be liberated. So, it's really hard to see an incentive for Russia to settle at the current borders. And by default, any solution that is not permanent is just a pause for the next round of fighting when it's more convenient for Russia”.
For my Writers’ Writers tip sheet, he chose Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist's Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine by Timothy Snyder (Yale University Press, 2005) and Kaputt by Curzio Malaparte (first published in Italian in 1944 with the latest edition from Adelphi, 2014; translated into English and published in 2007 by NYRB Classics).