Exactly a year ago, on a similar scorching June day, I interviewed the editor of The Kyiv Independent, 34-year-old Olga Rudenko, and her CEO, Daryna Shevchenko, at the Founders Forum tech conference in Soho House, Oxfordshire. The luxury of our surroundings made only starker the separation between what was happening to them in Ukraine and the sheltered lives of those attending.
Their English-speaking digital news organisation had only launched a few months before, but as Russian forces tried to advance on Kyiv that February, they soon gained millions of followers.
Another year on, and on this day, we British are stuck obsessing over our former political leader. Ukraine regards the UK and Boris Johnson as great allies and saviours — Ukrainians have endured rape and torture; millions of civilians are still displaced as refugees (163,000 are living in this country); 19,000 of their children are missing across the Russian border, and thousands of young Ukrainian men are wounded or dead. And despite Europe and American support, new weapons and financial aid being sent every day, there is no end in sight. The same sense of separation between her world and mine remains.
I ask her how she feels, what has changed since. Lithe and softly spoken, with braces and pale, fine skin, she approaches each question with the same measured intelligence I’d noticed before. “I was more shocked, less tired a year ago,” she answers. “Now I am less shocked, but much more tired. We got through 2022 on adrenalin. Now we need to keep finding the strength to keep going. We don’t want to miss a crucial story but this level of exhaustion takes a toll. In our human relationships, everyone is traumatised in different ways.” As we talk, I notice the bone-deep tiredness etched across her forehead, and around her eyes.
In autumn last year the attacks from Russian forces ramped up again. “We often only had three hours sleep a day; we worked by candlelight, as they went after our infrastructure. It was a long, cold, dark winter. May was then insane, Kyiv under constant attack. We believe they wanted to bring down the US Patriot missile system guarding Kyiv. But they failed.”
Life regardless in Kyiv goes on. Many Ukrainians have returned from Poland, others moved to the relative safety of the city now that Patriot is guarding them. Restaurants are opening; she shows me footage of soldiers getting married in their uniforms. “People really want to live, to enjoy their little pleasures. Our economy is holding, our banking system is working.” Her boyfriend is a well-known television news reporter. “He is raising money for pick-up trucks. They can fetch the wounded from the frontline, but they often only last a few trips, they are essential for moving troops as well. We need more all the time.”
Everyone in Ukraine knows someone who has been injured or killed. “You learn early on reporting on this war, whether you will break or not. I personally have a very high threshold for what I can ingest. You need to look at the evidence, stay focused, we need to report war crimes. Only one video was posted online of Russian soldiers slowly decapitating a young Ukraine soldier with a knife, while he screamed…” She stops. “I had to take a small break. I had seen a lot of cruelty by then.”
She smiles wanly. “We must document and report.” They have a new war crimes Investigative unit. “Not just for the Hague”, Rudenko says emphatically, “but for the court of public opinion, to keep what is happening here fresh in people’s minds. Because Russia is waiting for the world to look away. We want to show how systematic the rape is; the torture,the scale of it. It’s not the odd bad Russian soldier going rogue. It’s part of their war plan.” Their first film coming in July investigates the Ukrainian children taken across the border to Russia. “Only 361 have returned.”
What do they want from the West? More weapons, more quickly, she says echoing their president. “The fighter jets, too. Every day more lives are lost. We need more sanctions against Russians and those that are supplying the Russians with western weapon components.”
The future? “I am planning for one week off in July. Everything else is about focusing on the work… aside from that, what can we plan?
“The counter-offensive has begun but it is going to be painfully slow.”
I’m tired of the endless Tory drama
If anyone reading this on a hot sweaty Underground ride home was hoping — whether a fan of one Boris de Pfeffel Johnson or not — the psychodrama between him and Rishi Sunak was over, think again. Johnson and his shrinking band of acolytes blame Sunak for bringing down his premiership, and tomorrow the bets are on that the Daily Mail’s loudly trumpeted columnist will be our former prime minister, who joins his most loyal of pals, Nadine Dorries.
Conversations with the Mail have been ongoing for some time. What a coup for the editor, it will generate constant headlines. What fresh hell for Number 10. From the Mail’s pages, Johnson — who turns 59 on Monday — will be able to loudly defend his policies, his parliamentary record and rage against the “deranged kangaroo court” that is the cross-party committee that concluded he had misled Parliament, that also had four Tory MPs, including committed Brexiteers (facts, what facts?).
Johnson’s former spin doctor Guto Harri was on the airwaves last night, lambasting Westminster and Harriet Harman for ruining a man’s career with no judge or jury. Except that Johnson frequently took this route himself. Allegra Stratton’s brutal exit springs to mind, or the 21 MPs Johnson sacked from the Tory party for defying him on Brexit. This is politics. Certainly, in Johnson’s world. I personally feel exhausted by the constant siege.
