Inside Ukraine: How to instantly kill a would-be war correspondent’s appetite

I am barrelling through the night towards an active war zone, and I have to be honest: I assumed this trip would be cancelled.

The invitation to visit Ukraine and report on its “rebuilding” was issued at a time when it seemed a real, meaningful ceasefire with Russia might actually be on the cards. That hope was torpedoed on Sunday, 13 April, when Russian forces bombed the city of Sumy in the deadliest attack on Ukrainian civilians in almost two years.

In the days following the Sumy bombing, I kept checking my email for what I thought would be the inevitable notification from my Ukrainian hosts that the trip would not be going ahead. None arrived. It slowly dawned on me that I would indeed be heading off, not to a country picking up the pieces after war, as envisaged, but a country still very much under siege.

That seems like a bit of a different proposition, and one that I worry I might not be entirely … cut out for?

I also start to feel bad about being mean about DA leader John Steenhuisen’s trip to Ukraine in May 2022, because now that I am in the same situation I see that I should have been more admiring of his courage, in the same way that I hope others will be admiring of my great courage.

The info pack from the Ukrainian organisers arrives.

Much of it is devoted to how to stay safe. During “incidents”, we are to head immediately to the nearest air raid shelter. If you can’t get to a shelter, you must follow the “two walls rule” — which, I will discover, is a mantra every Kyivian has memorised.

“The safest part of the building is considered to be a space in which there are at least two walls without windows between a person and the street,” it says. In other words: hallways. Hallways are your friend.

I look up the hotel at which we will be staying in Kyiv. Its greatest selling point seems to be its “equipped bomb shelter with free Wi-Fi, toilet, shower, TV, and a separate exit to the street”.

It would be a bit much to charge you extra for Wi-Fi in the bomb shelter, I think, when you’re presumably already at quite a low ebb.

“Conferences and other events can be held in the bomb shelter,” it further advertises.

As if conferences weren’t already bad enough!

In the days leading up to my trip to Kyiv, I scan the Ukrainian news. Three days before we are due to arrive, a missile attack on Kyiv kills two. It happens during a period in which Russia has supposedly declared a ceasefire to mark the 80th anniversary of victory in World War 2. The three-day truce is widely reported as fact by international media.

In reality, 117 Russian “combat engagements” in Ukraine are recorded on Thursday, 8 May alone.

***

Something fairly obvious, which I had nevertheless failed to consider, is that it is impossible to fly into an active war zone. The only way of reaching the Ukrainian capital is via an overnight sleeper train from Chelm, in eastern Poland.

Everyone has to take this route, including the European heads of state making up the “coalition of the willing” who will arrive at Kyiv station just a few hours ahead of us on Saturday, 10 May. Seeing the footage of their fresh faces and pressed suits spilling gaily on to the train platform, I deduce that they were on a quite different sort of train, a fancy diplomatic train. (My Ukrainian hosts later confirm this.)

The train that our group of five journalists from the Philippines, India and South Africa will be taking is not one from which it is possible to disembark looking as dapper as Emmanuel Macron.

On entering the cabin that I will be sharing overnight with Die Burger editor Willem Jordaan, however, we are both pleasantly surprised by the situation. It is is a two-tier bunk bed arrangement, but the lower tier is an ordinary train seat, presumably for us to sit upon until we decide to retire to the mattresses above.

The cabins of the train offer basic but clean sleeping conditions. (Photo: Rebecca Davis)

I exit to go to the toilet in high spirits and return to find Willem smiling at me with an indecipherable expression. I look up and see that the top bunks are now occupied by two strangers. The bottom seats have simply yet to be converted into beds for Willem and me.

Having the oxygen in the cabin instantly reduced by 50% feels like something of a blow, but I tell myself to toughen up in the fashion of the grizzled war correspondent I must become. My concern now shifts to how I will change into my jimjams in front of three other people in a space approximately the size of a bathroom cubicle. I decide this is a non-starter; I will be sleeping in my daywear.

A four-sleeper cabin can start to feel a little too cosy after 11 hours. (Photo: Rebecca Davis)

My secondary worry is about the quantity and quality of snacks I have packed. Warned that there was no food or drink available for sale on our minimum 11-hour journey, I panic-hit a Polish grocery store but, befuddled by the exotic items on offer — energy drink-flavoured crisps, anyone? — ended up with a strange picnic consisting of a single banana, a cream pastry, 10 raspberry Jaffa Cakes and a packet of chips of unknown flavour.

But my appetite instantly disappears when I see what the US embassy in Kyiv has just posted online: a warning about a “potentially significant air attack that may occur at any time over the next several days” in Kyiv.

Not being hungry any more is a real boon given my weird rations. DM

Rebecca Davis is in Ukraine at the invitation of Internews Ukraine and the International Renaissance Foundation.