A long war is unimaginable to people in the developed world. Since WWII, most states in Europe have not experienced conflict in their lands — barring the Balkans in the 1990s — and the US has never really lived through such a reality, apart from the bombing of Pearl Harbour in December 1941 and the attacks of 9/11. And while some parts of Africa are mired in conflict, as indeed is the Middle East, it is the success of the postwar order that war is largely not an ongoing backdrop to life across the globe.
And then there is Ukraine: invaded in 2014 by Russia, which illegally annexed Crimea, then sent its “little green men” into the Donbas, where there has been fighting ever since. Then came the full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022. Incredibly, Ukraine repelled most of the Russian invaders, but a deadly front line was established alongside ongoing vicious Russian attacks on cities and civilian infrastructure across Ukraine.
How do you understand these events as a journalist inside Ukraine, trying to report the truth while not exposing your state at war? How do you cover these events as an international journalist, seeking the real story without endangering people? And what happens to truth and journalism in a long war in which civil society is a strong player and corruption rears its head?
To answer these and many other questions, ELN Senior Associate Fellow Ilana Bet-El is joined by Kristina Zeleniuk of the TSN website and Kim Barker of The New York Times. A fluid, fascinating and funny conversation with passionate journalists.
This episode was recorded on 13 November 2025
Chapters
- The call for journalism: passion and purpose
- Navigating journalism in a war zone
- The current state in Ukraine
- The impact of the corruption scandal on Western support
- The critical role of Ukrainian civil society
Mentions
- TSN website
- Dmytro Khyliuk, a freed Ukrainian journalist
- The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan
- Whisky Tango Foxtrot
- Articles on the corruption scandal: NABU & CNN
Follow
- Kim Barker LinkedIn, New York Times , website
- Kristina Zeleniuk LinkedIn
- Ilana Bet-El
- Instagram @women_leaders_podcast
- Watch this episode on our YouTube channel
Credits
- Production: Florence Ferrando
- Music: Let Good Times Roll, RA from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/ra/let-good-times-roll License code: ZXIIIJUU2ISPZIJT
Image credit: Florence Ferrando
The European Leadership Network itself as an institution holds no formal policy positions. The opinions articulated above represent the views of the authors rather than the European Leadership Network or its members. The ELN aims to encourage debates that will help develop Europe’s capacity to address the pressing foreign, defence, and security policy challenges of our time, to further its charitable purposes.
