A Plea from Yuriy in Kyiv
Emergency Ukraine crisis episode for the True Fiction Project
On Thursday February 24th, Russian troops started crossing into Ukraine, bringing destruction, death, chaos… the very curse of war. More than a million Ukrainians have fled since but many have returned to become part of a new civilian army.
A colleague from the radio world passed me the contact details of Yuriy Matarsky, a journalist based in Kyiv. I knew immediately I wanted to talk to him — to understand the perspective of a fellow journalist, yet one who was on ground living through the chaos.
I reached out to Yury requesting a time to talk in the coming days. He responded immediately to say there was no certainty that he might be alive in the coming days. The time to talk was now. We have reached a moment when journalists and civilians have become soldiers.
