On the Ground With a Ukrainian Journalist
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 10 March 2022
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What it’s been like for one Ukrainian-American journalist to cover the Russian attack on his homeland: “The first couple of days of the war, I threw myself into work, and then after that, I couldn't function for a day or two. And I quickly figured out that if I keep working, then I have to abstract it on some level.”
Guest: Romeo Kokriatski, managing editor of The New Voice of Ukraine and co-host of the podcast Ukraine Without Hype.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Romeo Kukotsky doesn't know quite how to answer the first question people ask him these days. |
| 0:13.0 | Even though it's about as simple as they come, how are you? |
| 0:17.7 | To be honest, I've been asked that question so many times. |
| 0:21.6 | It's gotten hard to keep track of what my mood is in a given point. |
| 0:30.5 | Romeo lives in Ukraine. |
| 0:32.5 | He used to live in the capital, Kiev. |
| 0:34.8 | He fled a few days back. |
| 0:36.5 | Now he's staying in the country in a house his grandfather |
| 0:38.9 | built decades ago. It's pretty quiet there, but it's not completely out of the war zone. |
| 0:46.5 | Like there were a couple of missile strikes against one of the local airports, or against |
| 0:52.8 | the local airport, I should say, a few days ago. |
| 0:56.4 | But that wasn't the airports outside of the city. |
| 1:00.4 | And to be honest, everyone was kind of expecting that airport to be hit anyway. |
| 1:04.9 | So it wasn't really surprising. |
| 1:06.5 | You sound very chill about a missile strike. |
| 1:09.0 | I mean, how else am I supposed to be? |
| 1:11.4 | Oh, my God. Like, my hair's on fire. I mean, how else am I supposed to be? Oh, my God. |
| 1:12.5 | Like, my hair's on fire. |
| 1:14.7 | I mean, yeah, like, the enemy has cruise missiles. |
| 1:16.0 | They're clearly going to use them. |
| 1:18.1 | Like, they're going to use it. It's a war. |
| 1:20.1 | So it's hard to, it's hard to be freaked out all the time. |
... |
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