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Clea Broadhurst, journalist at RFI: "To bear witness to the war in Ukraine is to gain in humility"
Audio 16:24
The Prosecutor General of Ukraine, Iryna Venediktova, visits a mass grave in Boutcha, on the outskirts of kyiv, April 13, 2022. © FADEL SENNA / AFP
By: Alexandra Cagnard Follow
2 mins
A journalist with RFI's international service, Clea Broadhurst has just returned from a second reporting mission in Ukraine.
From kyiv, the capital, in the heart of Donbass, accompanied by Jad El Khoury, sound engineer, she traveled the country for two weeks.
In this episode, she recounts the ongoing war in the Donbass and the growing number of stories of abuses committed against civilians by Russian soldiers.
[Warning, this episode contains difficult testimonies that may offend the youngest.]
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In this episode of
Witnesses News
,
Clea Broadhurst
, explains the differences between her two missions in Ukraine.
The first time she had been there, the war had just started.
What had struck her first when entering through the Polish border were the thousands of people trying to flee.
She then went to the southern front, to Odessa and Mykolaiv where the bombardments were incessant.
“
During this second mission,
she says
, we went to Kiev and its surroundings where several towns had just been liberated.
We followed the prosecutor Iryna Venediktova, who accompanied a French team charged with investigating possible war crimes
”.
Accounts of violence committed by Russian soldiers are increasing.
Clea and Jad have met a man.
His name is Konstantin.
Thanks to his Kazakh passport, he was able to pass through Russian checkpoints in besieged towns around kyiv.
He was able to extract over 200 people from seven different villages.
Many of those he saved told him what they had been through.
Psychologists then confirmed to Clea that they had expected from the start of the war to receive this kind of testimony, but that the women and men who have been victims of rape and torture find it very difficult to talk about it. .
Clea and Jad also went to the Donbass: "
We had just left Kiev where there weren't too many bombing alerts, but there were constant alarms there and we can feel that the Russians have concentrated their offensive in these eastern territories
".
If 90% of the population of Donbass fled, 10% of the inhabitants remained: “
On the journey between Kramatorsk and Sievierodonetsk, we only come across ghost towns.
People mostly live in bunkers.
A majority of them have been there since February 24, when the war began, they are trying to survive and are waiting for it to pass
”.
Clea concludes by saying that she was particularly touched by the Ukrainians.
“
By listening to them, we gain in humility and our job is to convey their messages.
It was important for me to return to Ukraine to continue to bear witness to what is happening today in this country
”.
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Ukraine
Volodymyr Zelensky
Vladimir Poutine
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Human rights
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Clea Broadhurst
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