Angelina Kariakina has headed the newsroom of Suspilne, Ukraine’s public broadcaster, since 2020. In terms of content, the station is independent of the government, but it determines the financing. Suspilne has been underfunded for years – and is supported with EU money, BBC Media Action and Deutsche Welle. Kariakina was previously the editor-in-chief of the small, independent channel Hromadske TV, which was founded in the wake of Euromaidan in 2013/2014 when hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians protested against the regime of then-President Viktor Yanukovych. On the day Russia declared war on Ukraine, she only had a few minutes on the phone.
SZ: Suddenly there is war in your own country: How do you experience that as a journalist?
Angelina Kariakina: The moment we heard that Putin was declaring war on our country, we all rushed to the editorial office. Since then – three or four in the morning – we’ve been broadcasting live. We keep getting news of attacks on strategic objects across the country, different cities, different regions. And news about people who were killed: military, civilians, in some regions also children. So we’re just trying to understand how bad it really is.
Your editorial office is in Kiev. How is the atmosphere in the capital right now?
We are in the city center, in the government district. Now and then there is an alarm warning of an air raid on Kiev. Then we have to go down to the basement and wait. At the moment we are still most concerned about Kharkiv, Odessa and Kherson, the most vulnerable regions. But there were also reports that Russian helicopters were spotted in a small town near Kiev firing on the airport from the air. Because of this, many people are trying to leave Kiev. So far there hasn’t been any panic in the city, but many people still want to leave. There are traffic jams on the roads leading out of the city. Some try to flee to their families in the west or somewhere else. But the problem is: we don’t know where in Ukraine it’s really safe.
How do you get secured information?
It is very difficult. We have statements from the President, from the Secretary of Defense, from the Secretary of State. And we have offices all over the country and we report live what is happening in Odessa, what is happening in Kharkiv, in Chernihiv. people listen to the radio, watch TV, find out about social media. Right now we still have all these play paths – everything works more or less. Sometimes the network goes down and cell phones are hard to reach, but people try to keep up to date. One of the most popular sources of information among the population is Telegram. Our Telegram channel is growing immensely. Thousands of people subscribe to the channel to follow the news. And many have been watching live since four in the morning.
Black smoke over Kiev: According to Angelina Kariakina, the Suspilne editorial team also repeatedly sounds an alarm warning of an air raid on Kiev.
(Photo: imago images/Kyodo News)
How is the mood in the editorial office?
Everyone in the editorial office is very mobilized. Of course, people worry about their families. But I believe that the work and the awareness that we are doing this for millions of people keeps us from going crazy and makes us calm and professional. There is no panic.
What do the coming days and weeks look like for you?
It is our job to provide news. And we do that as long as we physically can. We have no plan other than: report, report, report. But of course – if that’s impossible from Kiev, we’ll have to reschedule and report from another city. But so far all of us are highly motivated and mobilized. And we stay until the last minute.