WEBVTT - On the Ground in Ukraine and Beyond 0:00:02.320 --> 0:00:05.400 This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the 0:00:05.480 --> 0:00:12.080 Thing from My Heart Radio. On the February two thousand two, 0:00:12.640 --> 0:00:16.920 while the world watched on in horror and disbelief, Russian 0:00:16.960 --> 0:00:22.840 forces invaded the independent nation of Ukraine. While Ukrainian forces 0:00:23.160 --> 0:00:27.200 continue to fight for democracy, their right to sovereignty, and 0:00:27.280 --> 0:00:30.840 the soul of their country. My guests today are working 0:00:30.840 --> 0:00:35.879 to ensure their stories are told. Ida Sawyer is the 0:00:35.960 --> 0:00:40.479 director of the Crisis and Conflict Division at Human Rights Watch. 0:00:41.040 --> 0:00:45.000 The organization is currently on the ground documenting alleged war 0:00:45.040 --> 0:00:49.760 crimes in Ukraine. Sawyer shared with us some of their 0:00:49.800 --> 0:00:53.920 devastating findings and what the organization plans to do with 0:00:53.960 --> 0:00:59.760 these reports. But first I'm talking with Australian photojournalist Bryce Wilson. 0:01:00.520 --> 0:01:04.920 Wilson has documented the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine since two 0:01:04.959 --> 0:01:09.400 thousand fifteen. He was the first Australian journalist to embed 0:01:09.560 --> 0:01:13.000 with the Ukrainian Special Forces covering the conflict in the 0:01:13.080 --> 0:01:17.520 don Bass region. His work has been featured on ABC Australia, 0:01:17.760 --> 0:01:22.360 The Daily Mail and Sky News, and despite his resistance 0:01:22.560 --> 0:01:27.360 to social media, Wilson's Instagram and Twitter feed provided a 0:01:27.360 --> 0:01:30.759 gripping account of the front lines of the Russian invasion. 0:01:31.920 --> 0:01:35.480 That's crazy. I can't believe that Russia has declared war 0:01:35.520 --> 0:01:40.319 in Ukraine. As soon as the declaration, Oh, that's a missile. 0:01:40.319 --> 0:01:48.320 That's a missile. That's a missile. Bryce Wilson joined me 0:01:48.360 --> 0:01:52.000 at five am Australian time, after returning home for a 0:01:52.080 --> 0:01:56.560 well deserved break from reporting in Ukraine. I wanted to 0:01:56.600 --> 0:02:01.320 know how he found his way to conflict photo journalism. 0:02:01.400 --> 0:02:05.880 I found photography through a hobby, so initially I did 0:02:06.160 --> 0:02:10.639 do quite general work like that, like did some food photography, 0:02:10.840 --> 0:02:14.920 did photographs of my friends, made portraits. The war in 0:02:15.080 --> 0:02:19.000 Ukraine was in Australian television a lot because Australians were 0:02:19.080 --> 0:02:23.520 killed when Flight MH seventeen was shut down and the 0:02:23.600 --> 0:02:26.440 news coverage sort of stopped around the war. And then 0:02:26.480 --> 0:02:29.840 I realized that with the skills and the equipment that 0:02:29.880 --> 0:02:33.320 I had, I could probably do my own photojournalism. And 0:02:33.360 --> 0:02:35.440 that's when I went to Ukraine the first time. In 0:02:37.000 --> 0:02:40.760 Who Sent You There? I was freelancing, so I had 0:02:40.800 --> 0:02:44.440 just lost a job and I used my redundancy payout 0:02:44.480 --> 0:02:49.040 to fund my work in Ukraine that first time, and 0:02:49.720 --> 0:02:54.320 maybe naively. I contacted the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense and 0:02:54.360 --> 0:02:58.040 they told me that even freelance media could embed with 0:02:58.120 --> 0:03:01.280 the military so long as I leaded some forms and 0:03:01.440 --> 0:03:06.200 had body armor and everything. So yeah, in about I 0:03:06.280 --> 0:03:09.919 went to Ukraine for the first time with my gear 0:03:10.080 --> 0:03:13.840 and the cash REMI redundancy pay out and just figured 0:03:13.880 --> 0:03:17.840 out how to do journalism. And ever since then, that 0:03:17.960 --> 0:03:20.640 was kind of the catalyst for why I returned, because 0:03:21.200 --> 0:03:24.600 the relationships that I had made with people there from 0:03:24.639 --> 0:03:27.920 my first experiences in many ways stuck with me and 0:03:27.919 --> 0:03:30.640 they're still the same people. I'm still in touch with 0:03:30.680 --> 0:03:32.520 a lot of the people I met during that in 0:03:32.600 --> 0:03:36.480 bed and they've all helped me with my work as 0:03:36.520 --> 0:03:39.280 it has continued. So I'm assuming that that you had 0:03:39.320 --> 0:03:43.400 no formal training in terms of photojournalism or journalism from 0:03:43.400 --> 0:03:45.240 my radio and it is he's shaking his head no, 0:03:45.400 --> 0:03:48.200 with a sly smile in his face. So no formal 0:03:48.240 --> 0:03:52.520 training in photojournalism, the answer is no, correct. Yeah, even 0:03:52.640 --> 0:03:57.040 education wise, my background was in writing, and professionally I 0:03:57.080 --> 0:04:01.720 was working in different creative services agencies. Like I had 0:04:01.760 --> 0:04:05.320 all these fundamental little skills that were a bigger part 0:04:05.440 --> 0:04:09.400 of doing multimedia production work, but no formal training in 0:04:09.560 --> 0:04:14.920 journalism or anything related to that. So the embedded was 0:04:14.960 --> 0:04:19.479 your first real assignment of something that's would be a 0:04:19.560 --> 0:04:21.800 precursor of the work you've been doing, and you're there, 0:04:22.200 --> 0:04:26.080 what was going on in that you were chronicling. So 0:04:26.279 --> 0:04:31.120 the assignment that I had sent myself on that was 0:04:31.200 --> 0:04:35.760 my first practical experience doing journalism, and it was very 0:04:35.800 --> 0:04:39.400 much a thing of lean in the field because the 0:04:39.440 --> 0:04:42.520 place where I was sent was a small town very 0:04:42.560 --> 0:04:45.960 close to the Donetsk airport, which is just on the 0:04:46.040 --> 0:04:50.520 fringe of one of the occupied capital cities in the east, 0:04:50.680 --> 0:04:55.599 where there is now a major escalation seemingly imminent. I 0:04:55.720 --> 0:05:00.640 just say that because after the Russian military's goals Kiev 0:05:00.760 --> 0:05:04.200 region and throughout Ukraine have evolved a little bit. They're 0:05:04.240 --> 0:05:08.080 now focusing on the eastern part of Ukraine and they're 0:05:08.080 --> 0:05:11.880 talking about that being the primary objective. So it seems 0:05:11.920 --> 0:05:13.960 to me very likely that there will be a major 0:05:14.080 --> 0:05:18.479 escalation of the war in that area, specifically, not just 0:05:18.720 --> 0:05:23.479 in Kiev and western Ukraine. And so back then a 0:05:23.560 --> 0:05:26.679 war has been going on in Ukraine for eight years. 0:05:26.880 --> 0:05:31.960 The Russian military annexed Crimea and then was directly involved 0:05:32.160 --> 0:05:40.960 in in essentially fomenting a separatist uprising in some parts 0:05:40.960 --> 0:05:44.919 of the country. Small groups of people that wanted to 0:05:45.000 --> 0:05:49.240 break away from Ukraine, very small groups of people, received 0:05:49.279 --> 0:05:54.200 military support, funding as well as espionage level stuff from 0:05:54.240 --> 0:05:57.880 the Russian military and government, and they broke off two 0:05:57.920 --> 0:06:02.120 parts of eastern Ukraine called the Donetsk People's Republic and 0:06:02.200 --> 0:06:07.320 the Luhansk People's Republic. Those territories actually occupied a lot 0:06:07.360 --> 0:06:13.800 of eastern Ukraine, and then from the Ukrainian military and 0:06:13.880 --> 0:06:18.240 a lot of those were volunteers, pushed the so called 0:06:18.520 --> 0:06:22.440 People's Republic's military forces very close to the border with Russia, 0:06:22.680 --> 0:06:27.480 and then the Russian military launched an incursion, sent their 0:06:27.480 --> 0:06:31.400 military over the border from Russia into Ukraine to fight 0:06:31.480 --> 0:06:38.040 the Ukrainian military. Since then, a number of somewhat effective 0:06:38.040 --> 0:06:42.520 ceasefires have been implemented called the Mintsk Agreements, and those 0:06:42.600 --> 0:06:46.800 Minsk agreements largely froze the front line and conflict in 0:06:46.920 --> 0:06:51.400 place where it was before this current invasion started. So 0:06:52.279 --> 0:06:56.160 when I went there in for the first time, there 0:06:56.200 --> 0:07:00.320 were still significant fighting every day. So the Russia said 0:07:00.360 --> 0:07:04.120 them doing little out of town tryouts. If you would 0:07:04.120 --> 0:07:06.160 have been doing a lot of little rehearsals for this 0:07:06.160 --> 0:07:09.600 big invasion for quite a while now, correct. Yeah, it's 0:07:09.600 --> 0:07:12.000 a really great way to put it. And I think 0:07:12.520 --> 0:07:17.720 the thing that separates now versus previously the Russian military, 0:07:17.840 --> 0:07:22.040 for example, when they shot down Flight MH seventeen, there 0:07:22.080 --> 0:07:25.960 was a whole bunch of shadow play and trickery around. 0:07:26.080 --> 0:07:28.320 You know, it wasn't us, it was people that had 0:07:28.320 --> 0:07:31.760 our hardware. We're not actually in the dom bus. It's 0:07:31.800 --> 0:07:34.560 people that found our tanks. There was this joke that 0:07:34.640 --> 0:07:38.240 they were miners and they found all this equipment stored underground. 0:07:38.480 --> 0:07:41.200 There was all this proof that heavily implicated the Russian 0:07:41.200 --> 0:07:43.600 military as having been in the east of Ukraine, but 0:07:43.680 --> 0:07:47.840 they wouldn't really play into the uncertainty of it all. 0:07:48.080 --> 0:07:52.200 And it was almost a proxy war where the Russian 0:07:52.240 --> 0:07:55.120 military was directly involved in on the ground, but they 0:07:55.240 --> 0:07:58.880 hid behind the idea that it was separatists doing this, 0:07:58.960 --> 0:08:02.520 the rebels. Yes, and they blamed it on separatists and 0:08:02.600 --> 0:08:06.400 your rebels in Dulansk and Donetsk, correct, because you were 0:08:06.440 --> 0:08:09.320 there for both of those, correct incursions, and and so, 0:08:09.440 --> 0:08:13.680 but there were no direct Soviet troops on the ground, 0:08:14.640 --> 0:08:18.120 tanks and weaponry or were there there were so Russian 0:08:18.120 --> 0:08:21.360 military hardware and soldiers were present at some of the 0:08:21.440 --> 0:08:24.800 largest battles in the bus in the early days of 0:08:24.840 --> 0:08:32.439 the war, and because the Ukrainian military counter offensive to 0:08:33.000 --> 0:08:38.280 recapture the occupied territories was so effective, the so called 0:08:38.280 --> 0:08:41.440 separatist forces were pushed very close to the Russian border, 0:08:41.559 --> 0:08:45.600 and that's when the Russian military started launching artillery strikes 0:08:45.640 --> 0:08:49.400 from across the Russian border into Ukraine. They sent their 0:08:49.400 --> 0:08:53.880 military forces in to fight the Ukrainian military actively, and 0:08:54.120 --> 0:08:57.920 the battles where the Russian military participated then was some 0:08:58.000 --> 0:09:00.240 of the most bloody in the history of the war 0:09:00.320 --> 0:09:03.360 at that point. And in one battle, for example, called 0:09:03.480 --> 0:09:07.360 illa Weis, a large percentage of the Ukrainian armed forces 0:09:07.440 --> 0:09:12.840 were encircled and during a breakout humanitarian corridor which was 0:09:12.960 --> 0:09:17.480 offered by the Russian military, a large convoy of Ukrainian 0:09:17.480 --> 0:09:21.200 military personnel left and then the Russian military bombarded that 0:09:21.280 --> 0:09:26.280 convoy with artillery and indirect fire and it killed potentially 0:09:26.360 --> 0:09:31.199 up to a thousand people. During these don Bass battles 0:09:31.240 --> 0:09:35.840 that you covered in six seven years ago were atrocities 0:09:36.000 --> 0:09:38.720 playing then when you hear reports about what's going on 0:09:38.800 --> 0:09:42.600 in Ukraine now? Does it match what you saw years ago? 0:09:43.280 --> 0:09:45.800 I mean as a matter of what level, because I 0:09:45.840 --> 0:09:50.560 saw atrocious things I saw still it's very surreal to 0:09:50.640 --> 0:09:53.800 me because the scenes and events I'm seeing now did 0:09:53.840 --> 0:10:00.400 take place seven years ago. I saw destroyed neighborhoods, maimed bodies, 0:10:00.440 --> 0:10:05.680 missing legs, civilians, homes are destroyed, civilians killed by the war. 0:10:06.400 --> 0:10:10.280 I saw mass graves, not on the same scale, but 0:10:10.840 --> 0:10:14.719 graves where the local separatist forces in that area had 0:10:14.760 --> 0:10:18.960 just dumped people. Civilians from the nearby area dumped their 0:10:19.000 --> 0:10:21.880 own dead personnel when they left. A lot of the 0:10:21.880 --> 0:10:24.440 events that we're seeing now did take place then, It's 0:10:24.480 --> 0:10:27.640 just the scale now, I think, because of that same 0:10:27.679 --> 0:10:33.079 reason that the Russian forces were not their quote unquote, 0:10:33.480 --> 0:10:35.920 there was a lot more subterfuge, whereas now that it's 0:10:35.920 --> 0:10:38.079 all out in the open and not in the shadows, 0:10:38.200 --> 0:10:42.600 everything has been ramped up and scaled up significantly. So therefore, 0:10:42.679 --> 0:10:45.800 I'm assuming you you weren't surprised at all when things 0:10:45.800 --> 0:10:48.280 took the turn they took this year. It was heading 0:10:48.280 --> 0:10:51.840 in that direction, correct. I felt like in the days 0:10:51.880 --> 0:10:54.560 before the invasion was announced, I was already out in 0:10:54.600 --> 0:10:58.240 the don Bus reporting on infrastructure damage in don Bus, 0:10:58.280 --> 0:11:00.360 which had been a big focus of my word, And 0:11:00.400 --> 0:11:05.600 I was given information from contacts within the security services 0:11:06.360 --> 0:11:09.800 setting very clear dates when they expected that the invasion 0:11:09.840 --> 0:11:13.400 would take place, and I will say that they were 0:11:13.920 --> 0:11:17.960 very accurate. The dates that they provided turned out to 0:11:18.000 --> 0:11:22.000 be correct retroactively, and the invasion was actually moved by 0:11:22.080 --> 0:11:26.160 the Russian military and government, and the dates I was 0:11:26.200 --> 0:11:30.440 given are initially were spot on accurate. And then I 0:11:30.520 --> 0:11:33.400 have friends that were serving in the military and they 0:11:33.400 --> 0:11:36.320 were telling me to We're being told we can't leave 0:11:36.360 --> 0:11:38.640 the base. We're being told that we should prepare that 0:11:38.679 --> 0:11:42.280 the invasion is likely to start tomorrow. So a couple 0:11:42.360 --> 0:11:45.720 of days out I knew pretty definitively that it was happening. 0:11:45.760 --> 0:11:49.520 But weeks beforehand, I was there to report on the 0:11:49.720 --> 0:11:53.280 escalation that was already taken place, because in the days 0:11:53.280 --> 0:11:55.679 and weeks leading up to the invasion, there was fighting 0:11:55.800 --> 0:12:00.120 in the Dumbus like I'd never experienced before, the severity 0:12:00.160 --> 0:12:05.439 of artillery, the damage to homes, cease, five violations, civilians 0:12:05.480 --> 0:12:10.160 being killed, like it all objectively increased exponentially in the 0:12:10.280 --> 0:12:13.440 like two weeks before the war started. When you show 0:12:13.520 --> 0:12:16.560 up there to don Buss again a few years later, 0:12:17.280 --> 0:12:19.200 that you know the lay of the land obviously, you 0:12:19.200 --> 0:12:21.280 know the territory, you know where to go to be 0:12:21.400 --> 0:12:24.760 safe for their place, like where does Bryce Wilson sleep? 0:12:25.800 --> 0:12:29.880 Who's paying the bill? When you go on these freelance projects, 0:12:30.240 --> 0:12:32.480 you have to fund this yourself. We did somebody pay 0:12:32.520 --> 0:12:36.079 for it. I had some offers to help with funding, 0:12:36.120 --> 0:12:39.320 but I didn't align with the organization's ethically. They were 0:12:39.360 --> 0:12:43.640 sort of towing almost this pro Russian media viewpoint, which 0:12:43.720 --> 0:12:47.280 was very concerning for me. But for all intents and purposes, 0:12:47.480 --> 0:12:49.959 all of my work since I started has been funded 0:12:50.000 --> 0:12:53.600 by myself. This was the first time that I've had 0:12:53.640 --> 0:12:58.200 any moderate commercial success for my work, But making money 0:12:58.280 --> 0:13:01.160 from doing it had never been a big priority to me. 0:13:01.280 --> 0:13:05.360 Like again, maybe naively, I thought there was like a 0:13:05.400 --> 0:13:09.720 paragon sort of value in journalism and the value of 0:13:09.760 --> 0:13:13.560 it to society, and that was the main motivator for me. 0:13:13.679 --> 0:13:18.079 So if I'm doing an assignment in somewhere like don Bus, 0:13:18.400 --> 0:13:20.640 I would stay in a city or a town very 0:13:20.640 --> 0:13:22.880 close to the front line, and then each day we 0:13:22.920 --> 0:13:26.360 would drive out to the areas where we needed to 0:13:26.400 --> 0:13:31.439 go to do reporting. But even thirty or forty kilometers 0:13:31.480 --> 0:13:35.040 away from the front line, life is relatively normal. In 0:13:35.080 --> 0:13:38.200 the evenings, I would go to a bar with some 0:13:38.280 --> 0:13:40.200 of my colleagues and we would eat a pizza for 0:13:40.240 --> 0:13:43.480 dinner and maybe have a beer or something like this. 0:13:43.679 --> 0:13:48.000 Like it's very surreal because in Key of for example, 0:13:48.320 --> 0:13:53.560 before the current invasion, people would live very normally and 0:13:53.880 --> 0:13:56.400 you could almost fault them for that, like forgetting there 0:13:56.480 --> 0:14:00.000 was a war seven hundred kilometers away. But people even 0:14:00.040 --> 0:14:02.760 thirty kilometers away from the front line would forget there 0:14:02.800 --> 0:14:05.079 was a war at times, and that was very strange. 0:14:05.720 --> 0:14:07.920 Why do you think that is a sense something peculiar 0:14:08.440 --> 0:14:11.840 to them? I mean, even in the United States, someone 0:14:11.920 --> 0:14:14.760 said to me that nine eleven will eventually take its 0:14:14.760 --> 0:14:17.760 place alongside Pearl Harbor. It will become a very distant 0:14:17.800 --> 0:14:24.680 memory and Americans will forget this almost inconceivable event that 0:14:24.720 --> 0:14:28.720 happened here in New York and two one. But there's 0:14:28.760 --> 0:14:31.880 nothing peculiar to the Ukrainian nature that makes them want 0:14:31.960 --> 0:14:35.760 to carry on with life as they live it. Where 0:14:35.760 --> 0:14:37.640 is there some where is there something unique about them 0:14:37.720 --> 0:14:40.280 you've found? I mean, there are lots of things that 0:14:40.320 --> 0:14:44.040 are unique about Ukrainian people. One example I can give 0:14:44.280 --> 0:14:47.000 I was working in a village which had just been 0:14:47.040 --> 0:14:51.560 struck by artillery. A person's home was completely destroyed, their 0:14:51.600 --> 0:14:55.000 neighbors homes were destroyed. They were quite literally pulling the 0:14:55.000 --> 0:14:59.560 bodies of their neighbors out of homes around them. And 0:15:00.400 --> 0:15:04.240 I with my colleagues we hadn't eaten that day, and 0:15:04.280 --> 0:15:07.360 they just made us food in the destroyed ruins of 0:15:07.400 --> 0:15:11.520 their homes while they themselves were struggling. I've never experienced 0:15:11.560 --> 0:15:15.840 hospitality on that level before, and I don't know if 0:15:15.880 --> 0:15:19.040 anyone would help people in that instance, but we were 0:15:19.120 --> 0:15:23.320 just strange people, media personalities. There was me and two 0:15:23.360 --> 0:15:26.040 people who just came to them and they fed us 0:15:26.080 --> 0:15:28.960 out of the kindness of their own hearts. And I 0:15:29.000 --> 0:15:30.720 think that, to me was probably one of the most 0:15:30.800 --> 0:15:34.080 unique experiences I had during my assignment. I don't know 0:15:34.160 --> 0:15:36.720 how people live so close to the front line and 0:15:36.920 --> 0:15:39.280 kind of forget about the war, but I think it 0:15:39.400 --> 0:15:41.960 is because primarily the war had been going on for 0:15:42.040 --> 0:15:46.040 eight years at this point. It's part of the everyday 0:15:46.320 --> 0:15:50.200 fabric of life in some areas. Almost esthetically too, there's 0:15:50.200 --> 0:15:54.320 a whole culture around the conflict in Eastern Ukraine lives 0:15:54.440 --> 0:15:57.960 people go from checkpoints from one side of the contact 0:15:58.000 --> 0:16:01.720 line to the other every day. Like there's whole micro 0:16:02.000 --> 0:16:06.480 society and culture and experience of life solely because of 0:16:06.520 --> 0:16:08.880 the war that had been going on for eight years 0:16:08.880 --> 0:16:11.760 at that point. I also think that where you have 0:16:12.600 --> 0:16:17.320 extended conflicts like Vietnam and so forth, that people decide, 0:16:17.520 --> 0:16:20.560 this is my opinion, they make a decision to carry 0:16:20.640 --> 0:16:22.360 on with life as they know it because you know 0:16:22.440 --> 0:16:24.440 it could be over tomorrow. You know, you can live 0:16:24.440 --> 0:16:27.400 in fear, or you can try to normalize things to 0:16:27.480 --> 0:16:29.960 the best of your ability and try to you know, 0:16:30.080 --> 0:16:33.280 raise your children and grow your food or obviously I'm 0:16:33.280 --> 0:16:36.560 talking about Southeast Asia now. But one thing I'm wondering, 0:16:36.880 --> 0:16:40.520 what would you say is your understanding of what percentage 0:16:40.560 --> 0:16:43.480 what fraction is it a significant fraction of people who 0:16:43.520 --> 0:16:47.760 want to reunify with Russia. What percentage of the Ukrainian 0:16:47.760 --> 0:16:52.920 people are Russian sympathizers from your experience. In my experience, 0:16:53.080 --> 0:16:55.880 even in the East, I met very few people that 0:16:56.040 --> 0:16:59.880 truly wanted that unification. There's a lot of information around 0:17:00.040 --> 0:17:03.560 why the separatist republics exist, What are their motivators, what 0:17:03.720 --> 0:17:06.439 is the true support numbers? And to the best of 0:17:06.480 --> 0:17:09.399 my knowledge, even earlier in the war, like in the 0:17:09.600 --> 0:17:13.520 days before the separatists sort of uprisings happened, it was 0:17:13.600 --> 0:17:18.600 single percentage figures and low single percentage figures. And as 0:17:18.640 --> 0:17:21.800 time has gone on the eastern areas there's been a 0:17:21.840 --> 0:17:26.920 mass exodus of people into government controlled territories. And now 0:17:26.960 --> 0:17:30.480 I believe that a significant percentage of people that have 0:17:30.600 --> 0:17:36.400 received Russian passports and there's a whole I guess, absorption 0:17:36.520 --> 0:17:40.720 of that region into Russia effectively. But in my experience 0:17:40.800 --> 0:17:43.560 from west to east of the country, north to south, 0:17:43.680 --> 0:17:47.240 like pre and during the war, I never met anybody 0:17:47.280 --> 0:17:51.320 that truly supported this sentiment that like we in Ukraine 0:17:51.359 --> 0:17:53.439 want to be a part of Russia. It's not to 0:17:53.440 --> 0:17:56.199 say that they don't exist. I talked with people that 0:17:56.280 --> 0:17:59.600 had more pro Russian ideologies, but I never met someone 0:17:59.760 --> 0:18:03.520 our right, Is it just about tradition? What is it 0:18:03.560 --> 0:18:07.199 about Russia let alone? What is it about Putin that 0:18:07.280 --> 0:18:11.359 they want to align themselves with that government in that country? 0:18:11.720 --> 0:18:15.880 I think yes. So many people in those areas might 0:18:15.920 --> 0:18:19.119 have had memories of when the Soviet Union was a 0:18:19.119 --> 0:18:22.720 bigger part of their lives and economically, especially in the 0:18:22.840 --> 0:18:25.520 dom bast During the height of the USSR and the 0:18:25.640 --> 0:18:29.040 history of the Soviet Empire, the Dombas was a major 0:18:29.160 --> 0:18:33.199 economical center. It's where a lot of the mining infrastructure is. 0:18:33.840 --> 0:18:36.800 There was a lot of science and metallurgical studies and 0:18:36.800 --> 0:18:39.920 stuff that took place out there. People in those areas 0:18:40.000 --> 0:18:43.000 lived pretty good lives at the height of the USSR. 0:18:43.640 --> 0:18:47.159 Some people I talked to were or One of the 0:18:47.200 --> 0:18:49.320 guys was a driver that I worked with. He was 0:18:49.359 --> 0:18:54.200 a former marine in the Russian military. He deployed to Afghanistan. 0:18:54.800 --> 0:18:58.120 His memories and experiences of life are completely different than 0:18:58.600 --> 0:19:02.200 someone is living on their pench and struggling. I met 0:19:02.240 --> 0:19:06.760 another person who lived in Donetsk during sort of more 0:19:06.840 --> 0:19:10.160 economically affluent times, and they shared similar things, like all 0:19:10.200 --> 0:19:13.680 they knew was under Ukrainian control, that the area had 0:19:13.720 --> 0:19:17.359 fallen into disrepair and things like this, and they, I 0:19:17.400 --> 0:19:21.280 guess associated that their lives were better when Russia was 0:19:21.320 --> 0:19:24.760 in control of that area. When you started out and 0:19:24.800 --> 0:19:28.600 you had to teach yourself the business of photojournalism, especially 0:19:28.600 --> 0:19:30.720 an a war torn country, what was some of the 0:19:30.760 --> 0:19:34.120 most important things you had to learn upfront, And what 0:19:34.160 --> 0:19:37.399 do you wish you knew? What do you wish you 0:19:37.480 --> 0:19:40.040 do knew then that you know now? What have you 0:19:40.160 --> 0:19:43.560 learned about the job? I wish when I started I 0:19:43.600 --> 0:19:46.159 had better language skills, because for the first couple of 0:19:46.160 --> 0:19:48.840 times I went there, I didn't speak any local languages, 0:19:48.920 --> 0:19:51.520 and when I would come back home, I was taking 0:19:52.200 --> 0:19:56.160 Russian language classes and practicing through the internet and everything too. 0:19:56.200 --> 0:19:59.520 And I wish I'd have started that process sooner, because 0:19:59.600 --> 0:20:03.200 even an extra year, an extra eighteen months of practice 0:20:03.200 --> 0:20:07.400 probably would have been hugely beneficial to my work and skills. 0:20:08.119 --> 0:20:11.600 And I think to one thing I realized is doing 0:20:12.080 --> 0:20:14.679 this sort of work like it does have a toll. 0:20:14.720 --> 0:20:17.520 It takes a toll on you. And for me, it's 0:20:17.960 --> 0:20:21.280 this realization when you witness life and these events, that 0:20:21.480 --> 0:20:25.720 it changes your whole perception of even your reality back home. 0:20:26.040 --> 0:20:31.000 And that's what you can't undo. For me, at least 0:20:31.440 --> 0:20:34.240 filters or affects the filter or the lens through which 0:20:34.280 --> 0:20:37.560 you see your life. And after I went there and 0:20:37.600 --> 0:20:40.760 have worked there, changed a lot of the things that 0:20:40.840 --> 0:20:46.320 I think about life, philosophically, practically, professionally, socially like it. 0:20:46.320 --> 0:20:51.080 It made me a much different person. Now you do 0:20:51.280 --> 0:20:54.359 some of your reporting, or you post some of your 0:20:54.359 --> 0:20:59.040 stuff on social media. Correct, that's correct. I'd used Twitter 0:20:59.119 --> 0:21:03.320 primarily for my work, and then during the early days 0:21:03.359 --> 0:21:06.600 of the invasion I was live streaming updates to people 0:21:06.760 --> 0:21:10.600 on Instagram. How has that changed the way you work? 0:21:10.640 --> 0:21:13.160 I mean, having that immediacy and posting your own stuff. 0:21:13.280 --> 0:21:17.399 Do you find that beneficial? When the invasion started in 0:21:17.440 --> 0:21:20.400 the city I was in. Within seconds or minutes of 0:21:20.520 --> 0:21:23.440 putt into Claring war, they were already dropping bombs very 0:21:23.440 --> 0:21:26.920 close to my house, and I recognized that the war 0:21:27.040 --> 0:21:30.600 had started, and I put my body armor on and 0:21:30.640 --> 0:21:35.080 started live streaming. So from literally the earliest minutes of 0:21:35.080 --> 0:21:38.280 the war, I was live streaming to tens of thousands 0:21:38.280 --> 0:21:41.880 of people on Instagram, and that in and of itself 0:21:42.000 --> 0:21:44.560 is such a fundamental change to the way that people 0:21:44.680 --> 0:21:48.520 consume news and media. Like I didn't need to go 0:21:48.600 --> 0:21:52.840 on television to inform and share news with people. I 0:21:52.880 --> 0:21:56.760 was literally from the palm of my hand, from my iPhone, 0:21:57.320 --> 0:22:00.959 streaming to people all around the world. And at one moment, 0:22:01.480 --> 0:22:05.640 Russian cruise missile flew no more than fifty meters above 0:22:05.720 --> 0:22:08.800 my head and I was live streaming that and showing 0:22:08.840 --> 0:22:12.840 people that in real time, and then that clip went viral, 0:22:13.119 --> 0:22:16.359 as people say, and it was almost like a defining 0:22:16.400 --> 0:22:19.159 moment of the first day of the invasion, like the 0:22:19.200 --> 0:22:22.720 footage of that event. But I went from being someone 0:22:22.720 --> 0:22:26.040 who was very fundamentally antisocial media, like I used it 0:22:26.040 --> 0:22:30.399 as little as possible, two a large percentage of my 0:22:30.480 --> 0:22:34.040 work being attributed to social media. So it's been for 0:22:34.119 --> 0:22:36.960 me a very It's like a contradiction in terms of 0:22:36.960 --> 0:22:39.800 how I want to conduct myself. But social media and 0:22:39.840 --> 0:22:42.920 the new Internet and new media has changed my life 0:22:42.920 --> 0:22:50.080 in a big way. Photojournalist Bryce Wilson. If you'd like 0:22:50.280 --> 0:22:54.040 more insight into the history of the Russia Ukraine crisis, 0:22:54.520 --> 0:22:57.840 check out my interview with New York Times correspondent and 0:22:57.960 --> 0:23:02.040 Putin biographer Stephen Lee Meyer. His book, The News Are 0:23:02.320 --> 0:23:06.120 The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin chronicles the ascent 0:23:06.480 --> 0:23:10.359 of the Russian president. Putin only one of the vote, 0:23:10.760 --> 0:23:13.480 and you know, it wasn't a slam dunk. And since 0:23:13.520 --> 0:23:16.800 then Putin made sure that the ways the elections are managed, um, 0:23:16.960 --> 0:23:20.280 there's no uncertainty in the voting. He stripped them of 0:23:20.320 --> 0:23:24.600 the competitive uncertainty that makes them truly democratic, either in 0:23:24.680 --> 0:23:27.560 terms of who can run and then the actual voting itself, 0:23:27.800 --> 0:23:31.280 because transitions in Russia have never gone well. Even during 0:23:31.280 --> 0:23:36.119 the Empire, it was always tumultuous. Here more of my 0:23:36.240 --> 0:23:40.200 conversation with author Stephen Lee Myers that Here's the Thing 0:23:40.440 --> 0:23:44.280 dot org. After the break, Bryce Wilson tells us why 0:23:44.320 --> 0:23:47.840 the Ukrainian forces are some of the best and most 0:23:47.880 --> 0:24:03.120 experienced in the world. I'm Alec Baldwin and you were 0:24:03.160 --> 0:24:07.840 listening to Here's the Thing. Photo journalist Bryce Wilson spent 0:24:07.920 --> 0:24:11.840 the last few months in Ukraine reporting on the Russian invasion. 0:24:12.480 --> 0:24:16.399 His breath taking first person live streams show the world 0:24:16.480 --> 0:24:18.960 what it feels like to be on the front lines. 0:24:19.480 --> 0:24:22.320 I wanted to know if the balance of power is 0:24:22.359 --> 0:24:26.680 affected by the Ukrainian forces preparedness or the Russian forces 0:24:26.760 --> 0:24:32.280 lack thereof. It's definitely both. The Russian military is critically 0:24:32.320 --> 0:24:39.400 underperforming in every facet, logistically, war fighting, the equipment itself, maintenance. 0:24:39.440 --> 0:24:42.280 There are so many facets as to why the Russian 0:24:42.320 --> 0:24:46.680 military performance has been what it is. But the Ukrainian 0:24:46.760 --> 0:24:51.360 armed forces too in the dumbas tens of thousands hundreds 0:24:51.400 --> 0:24:55.159 of thousands of Ukrainian military personnel have done deployment in 0:24:55.200 --> 0:24:59.760 the active war zone. The Armed Forces of Ukraine, in 0:24:59.840 --> 0:25:04.080 my opinion, are probably the most contemporarily experienced military in 0:25:04.119 --> 0:25:08.159 the world. They are trained extensively over the last eight years. 0:25:08.640 --> 0:25:12.320 They're motivated to defend their homes. They're equipped like there 0:25:12.320 --> 0:25:15.760 are so many variables that go into why they've been 0:25:15.800 --> 0:25:20.240 so effective. But I do believe that people overestimated the 0:25:20.280 --> 0:25:26.000 Russian military capabilities and underestimated the Ukrainian military's capabilities. Did 0:25:26.040 --> 0:25:29.679 the citizens of Ukraine. Were they surprised that the Russians 0:25:29.720 --> 0:25:33.879 invader They weren't surprised. I think people were absolutely surprised 0:25:33.880 --> 0:25:36.119 that people I speak to from the east to the west. 0:25:36.280 --> 0:25:39.159 Even leading up to the invasion, people were still convinced 0:25:39.359 --> 0:25:42.240 it's not going to happen. It's you know, this is 0:25:42.280 --> 0:25:44.880 just fear mongering. And I think in many ways people 0:25:44.920 --> 0:25:47.560 were conditioned because of the eight years of war. They 0:25:47.560 --> 0:25:52.399 didn't understand how to view the threat objectively or in context. 0:25:52.720 --> 0:25:55.760 Even when the invasion came on the morning there were 0:25:55.800 --> 0:25:58.919