Nataliya Gumenyuk

Nataliya Gumenyuk had already begun receiving the first requests for comments and articles about the threat of Russian invasion at the end of 2021. It wasn’t easy to find time for that then. Gradually, as the news became ever more alarming, Nataliya started considering the messages she wanted to communicate to Western audiences. She wanted them to know that the Ukrainian people were determined to defend themselves fearlessly.

On the night of February 24, Nataliya was finishing her article for the Guardian. She had just returned from Severodonetsk and Lysychansk and was covering Russia’s intentions to attack the Donbas. She sent the template of the finished text off by 3 am, but never got to get any sleep that night. By 10 am, the editor received one more article from Nataliya. It said that Russia had launched a full-scale invasion against Ukraine. Nataliya just felt obliged to spread information worldwide, as did everyone who had access to international platforms and foreign audiences.

One of the key projects that Nataliya and her Public Interest Journalism Lab are engaged in is called The Reckoning Project: Ukraine Testifies. It is working to document war crimes through the ongoing efforts of fifteen journalists who are collecting people’s testimonies for international tribunals and criminal courts, as well as creating big multimedia stories about this for the global media. Another project, Life in War, is aimed at creating an online chronicle of the Ukrainian resistance and documenting the modern history of Ukraine so that future generations and the world can understand these events better. The PIJL provides financial support to thirty editorial offices whose reporters collect stories from the Russian-Ukrainian war across the country and publish them on a separate website lifeinwar.com.

Nataliya’s work is associated with regular trips across Ukraine. Recently she spent a week in Kherson, which from then on was clearly imprinted in her memory as a city of happy and positive people. When journalists come to any liberated Ukrainian town or village, they usually meet locals celebrating being released at long last, and it’s only later that the world learns about the war crimes, the torture chambers, the destroyed infrastructure and other dreadful facts of life under Russian occupation. The residents of Kherson, however, told everything about their troubles immediately. They said that there was no water or electricity in the city, but that did not matter much, especially as that they were finally free.

Gumenyuk’s every journey seemed like an expeditionary mission in the early weeks of the full-scale invasion. Nobody knew what was going on in other regions or had any clue, for instance, what was left of Kharkiv, or how one could get there and stay overnight. Western journalists were afraid that they wouldn’t come back from Odesa or Mykolaiv. The first month of the full-scale Russian invasion has still left an enormous amount of powerful impressions.

“I have never documented warfare as a military correspondent, but I’ve worked in a lot of war-torn countries where people died during hostilities,” says Nataliya. “The beginning of any war feels like doomsday to those who have never experienced it. Life goes beyond rules. The future ceases to exist. People are emotionally unstable: they feel like there is no end in sight to their anguish. War truly is a terrible and tragic occurrence, but this war of ours is not unique. In the end, people survive and win different wars. Knowing this is like a supportive anchor in your darkest times.”

As a war journalist, Nataliya was quite emotionally distressed in January to learn that the military correspondents who had previously worked in Syria had now came to Ukraine. These were a particular type of journalist who usually work under the harshest conditions: they know how to wear body armor, behave on the battlefield and distinguish different kinds of explosives. It was hard for her to accept the arrival of correspondents who had spent two years in Afghanistan and lived through the siege of Aleppo. The last time they had been in Ukraine was in 2014.

Nataliya’s work projects relate to everything Ukraine has been through since 2014. It’s irresponsible, she says, not to capture all these extremely valuable moments, especially on video. The journalists who collect people’s testimonies are confident that Russia will one day be judged for the war crimes committed in Ukraine, and they hope that it may happen sooner than we might expect. The global community has enough political courage for that. The admission of Russia’s guilt at the level of a trial court will be crucial for Ukraine’s diplomacy. The majority of UN member states would treat a terrorist country completely differently, as the concept of denying crimes against humanity will apply in such a situation.

Nataliya regularly talks about Russia’s war against Ukraine in the global media. By now, she’s already used to hearing ambiguous questions and incorrect arguments about the war from interviewers whose societies are pumped up with Russian propaganda and so cannot provide high journalistic standards. On the other hand, American, British and Irish media are usually very clear in their pro-Ukrainian attitude. But to convey your messages effectively in any discussion, says Nataliya, you always have to keep calm and rational. It’s also important to integrate people’s stories into your reports.

“Emotionality can touch the heart of your interlocutor, but never convince them,” Nataliya explains. “The tactic of attack, or of trying to compel people to empathy and solidarity never works. The message of inspiration, when people see us working flawlessly in very difficult conditions, without even thinking of surrender, is probably the best solution, because it prompts their willingness to support us.”

The information collected by the PIJL amounts to the historical truth, Nataliya emphasises. Neutrally reported and correctly verified testimonies from many hundreds of people will make a historical document that will never be doubted. This project helps the journalists from Kharkiv, Kherson, Kakhovka, Chernihiv, Okhtyrka and Severodonetsk to spread the information about Russia’s war crimes internationally. Besides, regional media need financial support now. Nataliya grasped the real extent of this problem when her organization launched an open call to provide 150 Ukrainian journalists or newsrooms with scholarships worth €2000 and received more than 700 applications.

“It’s hard not to feel the situation emotionally as you read about what’s going on with the media in Melitopol, Mariupol, Berdiansk, Nizhyn, Odesa or Mykolaiv,” she says. “Many of them were forced to close. Fifteen journalists from Kyiv had asked for support despite the fact that their offices were still working. This proves how serious their trouble is. That’s important when you want to understand the current circumstances of the professional environment.”

Since February 24, plenty of quality reporting journalism has emerged in Ukraine, although most of the media were focused on providing the most basic public information during the first months of Russia’s full-scale invasion. For Nataliya, journalism is more than just a craft; a good text must not only tell a story but evoke emotions into the bargain.

One of the materials Nataliya is working on within her PIJL projects concerns the Russian attack on the railway station in Kramatorsk on April 8, particularly drawing on the testimony of one of the local workers. That quiet and taciturn woman told the station manager to stay at home the next day after the shelling, and washed all the blood away with her own hands. The report also tells the story of a volunteer rescuer, an ordinary employee of a building store and a machine-building plant who carried the headless body of a small boy from under the rubble. It was for his own little daughter that the man began helping others: he wanted to believe that people would have helped his child in such a difficult situation as well.

Nataliya remembers how impressed she was by the story of a 24-year-old policeman from the district of Saltivka in Kharkiv. It was the third week of the full-scale invasion when she first met him at a metro station where about 800 people were sheltering. One of those underground residents, a 12-year-old boy, had made very good friends with the policeman and was following him around like a younger brother.

“That policeman was wearing a regular civilian coat,” Nataliya recalls. “I asked him why he was doing so, and he responded, ‘Look, if the Russians break through here and see me wearing a uniform, they will shoot me at once. But if I’m in civilian clothing, I will still have about five minutes to try to evacuate all these people.’ Just two short years before, he had been one of the many guys who live in the dormitory communities of big cities like Kyiv, Dnipro or Kharkiv. This is when you witness the moment of evolution in a person’s consciousness and see how the level of their responsibility rises. I care about such things very much. Today, I’m far more interested in talking to guys from Saltivka rather than Serhii Zhadan, because this war is about our entire society.”

After nine months of the full-scale war, Nataliya feels exhausted physically but not emotionally. “I have a very strange sensation, as if I have been preparing for this war all my life through,” she shares. “I wanted to be a war correspondent in a country where there had not been any wars.” At the same time, she admits, there is always an awareness that, sooner or later, the war may drop out of the headlines. We have been living like that for eight years ourselves, after all. Nevertheless, Nataliya is a war correspondent, and now she is working upon the topic that constitutes the keystone of her whole job.

“While you’re conducting the fifth dreadful interview about tortures in a row, you might sometimes start yawning and losing concentration,” says Nataliya. “It means that you cannot contain all these emotions anymore. Human empathy is not unlimited. One day, I may very well break down, lose the strength to keep going or do something irretrievably wrong, but I still have faith in journalism. I believe that our stories can make a big difference.”