What does the war look like on TV?

Not here, from the distance of the German news programs and talk shows, but on the Ukrainian channels, directly from Kyiv, where there is no other topic.

You can get an insight on the Internet, where the news channel Ukraine 24 is broadcasting with live English dubbing.

And how, on the one hand, the absolute state of emergency is depicted there, in depressing reports from the front, in interviews from the air-raid shelters and in booming encouraging clips around the clock, and on the other hand the routines of television reporting radiate normality, reveals the whole madness of this war particularly spooky way vividly.

Harold Staun

Editor in the feuilleton of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper in Berlin.

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Any program scheme has long since been abandoned, the genres are wildly mixed up: there are, for example, the regular advice articles, as we know them from storm warnings, only that they now explain to the viewers how best to behave when a bomb hits: " Don't hide under trees or in houses, but lie down on the ground," says the expert.

"If you're stuck in a house, take cover behind a second wall.

Make sure your shelter has two exits.”

There is the report of a private school that is now putting its courses online for everyone and is being touted by the principal in reckless marketing jargon: "For us, the customers come first."

There is an interview with a woman in a Donetsk suburb who says that the boys are all gone, but where is she supposed to go anyway?

And in between she has to cover her ears for a moment and ducks her head because the bombs are so loud and close.

A dog with an access card

There are the animal rights activists who save pets from starvation, free them from apartments where they only wanted to leave their owners for a day and then couldn't go home.

After breaking open the door, they seal it again, everything must be in order.

They also have to evacuate the animals from the homes on the outskirts of the city. They have found asylum for some in Poland or Sweden.

A dog now lives in the transmitter, he has his own access card.

There is, every now and then, a joke, a punch line, a short laugh.

There's the report about a company that used to produce skateboards and is now welding together barricades against the tanks.

And the field reporter talks so jovially, as if he is presenting some funny start-up.

There are the perpetual loop videos, edited together from the uplifting scenes of the war: tanks being shot down, soldiers getting married, soldiers dancing, Kyiv at night, light blue fighter jets, women baking bread, images of demonstrations around the world, the anthem.

There's Evgeny Sinelnikov, host of a well-known travel show that's as popular in Russia as it is in Ukraine.

For days he was imprisoned in his house in Bucha, surrounded by the Russian army.

Sinelnikov tells how difficult it is for him to reach his Russian audience: they need therapy, he says.

And then there is an economist from Kyiv who is being questioned about the effectiveness of the sanctions against Russia.

They'll be bankrupt in a few months, he says.

And when the war is over, Ukraine would have a chance to modernize the country, become a leading technological force, reinvent its cities, decentralized and without traffic jams.

"We will build the land of our dreams."

Yes, says the moderator, if we prevent the wrong people from coming to power.

"Let's stay united.

Otherwise everything will only get worse.

Otherwise we will create a worse enemy than Putin is.”