The sound of the fighter jets' engines woke me up with my heart racing. Only after 10 seconds did I realize that these were Israeli fighter jets, flying above our apartment in Rehovot, not Vladimir Putin's planes of death from which I had taken cover in underground bunkers in Ukraine a week earlier.
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Covering war zones always has its baggage, and it all resurfaces at night. The faces of Yazidi children in Iraq who became refugees, the survivors of the Rwandan genocide, the Kurdish female fighters in Syria, or the threatening looks of Chechen warlords. There is something in this human evil that stays with you forever after such visits.
However, the most challenging part in covering a foreign conflict is the connection you feel with those you meet while you work, the people whose lives you have to enter, and they, in turn, enter your heart.
You can't stay indifferent to those faces, to their fate, to their wellbeing. Having woken up from the buzz of jets, my mind immediately shifted back to those moments there, thinking of those that I have left behind to deal with the Russian onslaught. This story is, to a large extent, their story, in their words, as they experienced the war that has beset Europe and the world.
My first visit to Kyiv was in late January. Just a moment before boarding the plane, a journalist working with our paper had given me some contact details for "fixers" who can provide me with leads to good stories and offer tips on where to go to properly cover the events while staying safe.
Coincidentally, the first contact who responded to my feelers was a young man by the name of Bogdan, a former volunteer in the Ukrainian armed forces and a great English, speaker. He had an impressive understanding of what has been unfolding. It turned out that I was a lucky man: His decision to respond made him my unofficial guru to anything Ukraine, my mentor and guide to what was taking place.
A social activist, a community heavyweight, and a man of nightlife, Bogdan turned out to be the ultimate wheeler and dealer. He could arrange an interview with a Ukrainian member of parliament, he could organize a trip to the Donbas front lines, he could even recommend a great coffee place where I can write up stories and where I can get a flack jacket. His network of friends turned out to be a source of endless stories and, when the time came, a lifeline that helped me escape the horrors of war.
During those days of late January, he was not overly concerned about the prospect of a Russian invasion. Like myself and many others, he thought that Putin would not go beyond a limited, local operation in eastern Ukraine to prop up the pro-Russian separatists in the enclaves there.
"You see," he told me every so often, "the Russians know that the Ukrainian military has improved and become sophisticated. They know that total war would take a heavy human toll and may unleash the West's entire gamut of sanctions, so they will probably seek a more complex operation that would involve hybrid warfare in order to place pressure on us." This was a prophecy that was correct and wrong.
Pizza and the whistling bullets
One of the first things that I have asked from Bogdan during the days ahead of the invasion was to reach the front line of the conflict between the state and the separatists in the eastern part of the country. I wanted to meet the Ukrainian army and to realize from them what was truly unfolding there. But to my dismay after submitting the request to the military, there was no response, as was typical when you don't have someone from the inside who could pull the strings for you. Many other journalists were stuck in limbo. But Bogdan was already hatching a plan to overcome this obstacle.
Together with him and his driver, Dima, I reached Mariupol, a city that is between the separatists and the Azov Sea. This city of more than 500,000 people has a nice town square, small but pretty. Bogdan and Dima's relationship with the city goes way back, I soon figured out.
"You this local administration building? This was where the separatists hunkered down," Bogdan tells me with nostalgia. "Dima was the crazy guy who set the place ablaze to make sure everyone would get out," he continued, showing me the dilapidated place. A smiling Dima then quoted the lyrics of a famous Ukrainian song, "The roof is burning, there is no need for water, let the SOB burn." It then dawned on me that Dima is more than just a driver.
Our guide in Mariupol was none other than the head of the local patrol force. The force was formed after the revolution in 2014, based on the local community police departments you can find in Germany, the UK, and the US. The goal was to infuse the community with young law-enforcement blood that is well motivated and cares for the values of the local population and ultimately to have the new cadre replace the corrupt old-guard of police officers.
At the time the winds of war were already clearly felt, and he made sure to give me an alarming piece of information. "We are aware of sleeper cells that have received orders to wait for the invasion and to abet it," he said. "I don't know if Putin wants to invade, but I have no doubt that someone is laying the groundwork for the real deal," he continued. His warning at that point sounded like an attempt to show that he, the worried city's police officer, was not shirking his duties to take on the threat.
In the local bar, which once served as a headquarters for the Gestapo and then for the Soviet intelligence service, some of Bogdan's friends gathered for a long night of drinking. Among those present were several friends from a snipers unit that had just returned from the front lines for a short break. Several foreign journalists were also there, along with a Serbian music producer and a human rights/LGBTQ activist woman named Dianna Berg. As someone who was born in now-separatist-controlled Donetsk, the struggles over Ukraine's national identity and her own personal struggle for the gay community have been one and the same.
"If we fall into the hands of Putin there will no longer be any human rights or gay rights. We would no longer be able to live as Ukrainians," she said. Today, when the city of Mariupol is still under attack, her words keep coming back and the fate she faces.
The next morning, Bogdan shares with me the plans he has made on how to reach the frontline. Since my embedding request has not been approved yet by the military, there had to be a creative workaround to reach the forces. Bogdan, whose businesses include a pizzeria in Mariupol, suggested we volunteer to deliver pizza to an elite contingent of the marines positioned just a stone-throw away from the separatists in the city.
The local command post at the city approved this gesture and soon enough I found myself helping the local staff prepare the pizza and loading it on Dima's car. After a very bumpy ride of some 90 minutes in the snow of eastern Ukraine, we arrived at a forward command post in a former Soviet tank factory.
The special forces, burly bearded men armed with machetes and axes were initially perplexed by the sight of this foreigner who had arrived. But after the rumor spread that a journalist from Israel has arrived, the suspicion faded and every single one of them started asking me about the Israel Defense Forces' weaponry and what kind of systems Ukraine should buy, assuming Israel would agree to sell it.
I found myself holding a Q&A session in front of a friendly crowd that yearns for antitank missiles and Israeli Tavor rifles. It lasted for about30 minutes. "With such weapons, we could repel the Russian forces to the Ural Mountains," one of the soldiers quipped.
To thank me for this lecture, one of the soldiers asked me if I wanted to get a panoramic view of the city from the rooftop. I gladly agreed, all but forgetting that I had acrophobia. A rusty metal ladder led to the exposed cement roof of the defunct tank factory and then, with gusts of subzero wind, I got an explanation on the separatist positions around me and how the Russians might help them once they invade.
Several days after he started his explanation a squad from the nearby post started firing at a shooting range. The sound of gunshots penetrated his words. One of the rounds was a near miss, hitting one of the overhead metal beams of the roof. The guide pushed me down and made me lie flat on the cold cement. We heard the bullets fly past us and we could not quite figure out whether this was from the separatists or from a higher command post that was held by the Ukrainians, but regardless, the tour ended in one fell swoop. I will never forget the fast descent on the metal ladder.
And then the world went haywire
By mid-February, Kyiv had become a city on the verge of panic attacks. A tour with a local resident and fighter named Maxim (a friend of Bogdan) had me arrive at the house of Tanya and Dennis.
By this point, the prospect of an invasion was more than just speculation. For them, and their three-year-old, things could not be tenser. With her sad eyes, Tanya told me how they bought weapons to defend their community from an invasion. "We are not gun enthusiasts, and we are definitely not bloodthirsty, but we have to defend our freedom. We could not live in a country that capitulates to Putin's whims," she said.
Tanya and Dennis are hardly the only ones who bought arms to prepare the defense of their country and city from invasion. Thousands like them now stand between the Russian army and its military objectives across the country.
Dennis turned out to be a very skilled driver, knowing every nook and cranny. He knows how to reach his destination, and more importantly - how to get out. This is why I asked him to take me, with a local educator named Oxana, to the contested Luhansk District, to a village that no longer has direct access to the rest of Ukraine due to the ongoing shelling.
We started our 8-hour journey early in the morning. Before leaving Kyiv, he warned us that "there are rumors that something bad is unfolding and we may have gotten ourselves out of harms way very quickly if things escalate. "
When we arrived in the evening at the village, Novotoshkivske, just on the front line with the separatists. During the past eight years of fighting it has been shelled endlessly, making life very complicated for its residents. Darina, a local English teacher, provided warm Ukrainian hospitality with tea, cookies, and candy, despite the town being low on food.
The young teacher told me how the teaching staff at the village managed to bring some semblance of normalcy to her school, with its 60 pupils enjoying some social life and structure despite the ongoing conflict. She explained how she fears every escalation would undo all the progress she has done and the hard work will go to waste.
Several minutes after they said those things a hell hit a power line no far from the village, cutting off supply. We drove to the city of Severodonetsk and found a motel. Before calling it a day, Dennis said that an acquaintance of his that is privy to what is going on among the separatists said that the units got an order to attack at dawn. We went to sleep fully clothed and then the world just went haywire
The artillery shelling that got me springing out of bed at around 5 a.m. was among the strongest I have ever heard. Luckily, it targeted the outskirts of the city but in light of the billowing smoke and shaking ground it was clear that we had to gt out of there. We saw other journalists, mostly from the UK, who had assembled in the parking lot to consider their next move.
One of the correspondents was having a heated argument with the local guide, who wanted to return to Kyiv. "You are panicking, nothing major has yet to happen, and this is where all the action is," the correspondent said with condescension to the guide, called Vitali. Meanwhile, there were rumors of a large-scale attack and aerial bombardments on Kyiv and Kharkiv. I saw the horror in Dennis'eyes, having realized that his wife and kids may be in harm's way (they are both in Kyiv), and I realized that it was time to go back.
We took Vitali with us for the long ride back to Kyiv. On the way, it felt like Dante's Inferno. Several hundred feet from us a shell had landed just before we were to go on the highway. Dust hit our windshield, but Dennis, being the skilled driver that he was, successfully stopped the vehicle on time and we emerged unscathed, apart from a very loud rind in our ears.
Along the highway, we saw the Ukrainian forces scramble to carry out a counteroffensive. Tanks could be seen going on the road with their chains, antiaircraft batteries kept changing their position to avoid Russian targeting and at one point a Grad rocket battery was deployed on the road itself and was about to fire, but we were kicked out before I could snap a picture.
In shelters and convoys
Near Kharkiv, we saw black smoke billowing from one of the air force bases that had been attacked. The smell of burnt fuel filled the air and we could hear the Russian plane buzzing above us, preparing for their next attack sortie. Later we saw a vehicle that had been hit, apparently from the air. Next to it lay a person, and by the look of the firs-responders, he did not make it out alive. He was perhaps the first of innocent civilians to suffer the brutal cost of this invasion.
We arrived back in Kyiv shaken. Upon entering my hotel room I realized that the nearby building had been hit by bombs and therefore the elevators would no longer work. On top of that, with my room turning toward the street, I had little protection against any further attacks. Bogdan, who had already joined the fighting forces, called to inform me that I had to leave the city. "IP am a journalist, " I shot back with determination. "My place is here, where things are happening."
"You will help no one if you get stuck in a besieged city or if you get killed in some raid," he responded with wise words. That night, I thought about his words as I took cover in the parking lot turned into a makeshift shelter. The spirit of solidarity of the people who had gathered there stunned me. Everyone who arrived at the shelter brought something that could help the others. A water urn, a pot of soup, some corn puff snacks, fleece blankets. No one came empty-handed.
I volunteered to employ my limited skills by preparing tea for the others as the sirens blasted in the background. At the end of the parking lot, behind a luxury car, I found Dasha, a young woman who needed a warm cup of tea and some comforting words. "My parents are in the west and I have just moved to Kyiv a year ago," she told me. "When things got intense, I left my daughter with them, but now I am stuck here and miss her."
Watching her speak was a heart-wrenching ordeal. Practically everyone present at the parking lot had some kind of story along those lines, about relatives who have been left behind, on the fear that they might not see them again. Upon daybreak, Maxim, who had guided me in Kyiv and on the Belarussian border, arrived. This time he was in uniform and carrying a rifle, having been called up to defend the city.
"I am going to fight, the Russians, have breached the border and are now just north of the city. I want you to get out of here," he told me.
That morning I left Kyiv with a broken heart. The vibrant city that I discovered for the first time a month earlier had become a ghost town, with the military patrolling the streets and the civilians hiding in underground shelters. The convoy of displaced that I joined to leave the city included some of Bogdan's friends, even though he himself had already been in the front and made his way back. Among the people with me was Tanya, Dennis's wife, who drove me to the border. She had left her home with their son Svetoslav.
The convoy, which comprised mainly women and children alongside a few men with military gear, left Kyiv and passed through one military checkpoint after another showing the various credentials nonstop. Travel was only permitted on back roads because the main arteries were under attack and some of the important bridges had already been destroyed by the Russians or by the Ukrainians, in an attempt to hinder the Russian advance. We were stuck in a never-ending traffic jam with thousands of additional displaced people from Kyiv and other cities. The drivers kept changing, and even I was asked to help drive. The atmosphere was somber, and every one of us kept thinking about the loved ones left behind in the capital that was under attack.
On the second morning of the travel, after driving all night, Ivan, the leader of the convoy assembled everyone in a gas station and announced with great fanfare that all of the people they were worried about are alive and well. He even showed me a picture of Maxim after a day of fighting, resting on a big sofa with a big assault rifle laying next to him. The announcement lifted our spirits.
Drawing inspiration from Israel
Not long after, I bid farewell to the convoy and made my way westward toward Lviv so that I could cross the border into Poland. But the persistent bombing of the Russians forced the train to stop in the city of Ivano-Frankivsk and all the passengers got out and ran toward the underground shelter.
I saw local soldiers try desperately to control the frightened civilians. "Children and the elderly first," I shouted in my elementary Russia and repeated it until the soldiers finally created a human corridor for those who need it most. In the underground shelter at the station, which was very well equipped, I found myself talking about my own experience in running for cover during Operation Protective Edge. They were most impressed by how accurate Israel's air defense and sirens were.
Outside the shelter, a young cinematographer named Vlad caught me and showed me his work on Instagram, telling me how hard it is to deal with this anxiety.
"My apartment in Kyiv was bombed and that's why I went back to my parents' place here. I don't really know what to do with this situation, I don't have any experience in this." It seemed that speaking about this made it easier for him.
Because the train continued toward Lviv and the news reports said that the lines at the border are so long that they are almost inside Poland, I decided to cross the border into Hungary instead. Vlad approached a tough-looking taxi driver and made sure he would take me to the border, near the town of Chop.
The driver, Vasili, was sitting at the wheel of a rusty Volga car, and could not speak English. But he made a great effort to communicate, especially with Russian swearwords. The drive went through the majestic nature reserve of coniferous forests and snow-capped mountains. It was a nice change of scenery after three days on the run.
At the border crossing there the line of cars stretched for more than 2 miles. Vasili told me that there is no chance that he would wait there. I told him that I would continue by foot and took my luggage out, to his bewilderment. I walked all the way to the checkpoint only to discover that there was no passage for pedestrians.
In a moment of resourcefulness, I asked one of the drivers to let me in, and it turned out that I had picked a warm and beautiful Ukrainian family. They gave me healthy food and presented me to the border guards as if I was just another family member.
But despite this moment of friendship with the locals, this did not hide the great suffering of the refugees who had to leave their homes and wait more than 24 hours at the border crossing, which was accepting only a few cars every hour. Pregnant women, the elderly, and little children waited there in harsh conditions.
This suffering of the people I have spent more than a month with continues to haunt me, just like when planes hover above me. Every several hours I make sure to check on the latest developments of my friends in the line of fire and I am just glued to the screen.
If there is something this war - the worst in Europe in this century - has taught me is that the most dangerous and difficult part of a journalists' job is not sniper fire or mortars but the small pieces of your heart that you leave behind with each person who welcomes you to their home and the brutal moment when you have to leave.
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