The Journalism That Helped Explain Ukraine Before the World Was Watching This was a special one. A huge thank you to Chris Sampson for organising our latest conversation with Simon Ostrovsky, a journalist whose work I have admired for years and who, in many ways, helped set the standard for reporting on Ukraine long before Ukraine became fashionable. For those who followed the war before February 2022, Simon needs little introduction. His groundbreaking Russian Roulette series for VICE News took viewers directly into the events unfolding across Ukraine from 2014 onwards. He didn’t sit thousands of miles away analysing somebody else’s reporting, he went there, he spoke to the people involved, he followed the evidence and, at times, put himself at considerable personal risk to tell the story. Simon was even detained by Russian-backed separatists while reporting in Sloviansk yet returned to the work. One of his most memorable investigations saw him trace Russian soldiers from their social-media posts back to Russia, exposing the reality of Moscow’s military involvement in eastern Ukraine at a time when the Kremlin was still insisting its regular forces weren’t there. That kind of journalism mattered then, and it matters even more today. As Simon puts it during our conversation, there is now an enormous amount of “low fidelity junk information” online, people reading the work of journalists, adding their own commentary and presenting it as reporting. Meanwhile, investigative journalists are travelling, finding sources, paying producers and camera crews, spending weeks on stories and doing the heavy lifting from which everyone else ultimately benefits.That’s one reason I enjoyed this conversation so much. We talk about Russia’s growing manpower problem, Simon’s recent reporting on Russians who fled to Georgia to avoid mobilisation, and what may come next as Moscow struggles to find enough men to sustain the war. We also compare that with what I have just witnessed at the other end of the pipeline: my second visit to a Ukrainian POW camp, where the demographics have changed dramatically and increasing numbers of prisoners are now coming from Africa, the Middle East, Asia and elsewhere. It leads into a fascinating discussion about Putin’s increasingly global army, foreign recruitment, exploitation, Russian citizenship, prisoners who discover Moscow has little interest in exchanging them, and the human reality behind Russia’s search for more bodies to feed into this war. But perhaps the part I enjoyed most was simply talking journalism. I actually discovered Simon’s work after arriving in Ukraine in 2018, when Aiden Aslin told me I needed to watch this journalist called Simon Ostrovsky. I found Russian Roulette and was hooked, ironically, Simon had already interviewed Aiden, and for years our paths seemed to cross without us actually meeting. So finally getting the three of us together, Simon, Chris and me, was a real pleasure. Simon is now trying to revive that same spirit of independent, on-the-ground investigative journalism through his own Substack and YouTube work, with the money he raises going back into documentaries, travel, local producers and reporting. Journalism isn’t regurgitating somebody else’s investigation from your living room, but going there, finding the story, challenging what you’re told and doing the work. Simon Ostrovsky has been doing exactly that in Ukraine for more than a decade and it was an absolute pleasure to finally sit down with him. And again, thank you to Chris for making this one happen. Related articles: Thank you Laura K, Liz Alexander, Barbara Upshaw, Christine Nobbs, Nancy Elise Pulliam, and many others for tuning into my live video with Simon Ostrovsky and Chris Sampson! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit shaunpinner.substack.com/subscribe
