When Anna Conkling arrived in Lviv in November 2022, she was 24 years old, spoke no Ukrainian or Russian, and was covering a war largely out of her own pocket. Her fixer in Kharkiv was costing her $200 a day plus gas and food. Her stories were paying her less than that. More than four years later, she’s a Livingston Award finalist, has bylines in the Sunday Times, The Telegraph, Foreign Policy and the Daily Beast, and is living in Berlin, about to head back into Ukraine, and still finding the stories that nobody else is telling. I wanted to talk to Anna because she represents something that I think gets overlooked in conversations about foreign correspondents — the freelancer who packs a bag and just decides to go, figures it out on the ground, and somehow builds a career out of sheer will and an ability to find the human story inside the chaos. Deadliners is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. On the economics of starting out Anna was blunt about the early years in a way that a lot of journalists aren’t. She made almost nothing her first year. She was covering everything out of pocket. This isn’t unusual for young freelancers in conflict zones — but it’s rarely said this plainly. What changed things, gradually, was building relationships with editors who would cover her costs. But she’s also clear that, in her experience, British media tends to have better frameworks for how to treat freelancers in the field. More resources, better guidelines, a more established culture of working with people on the ground who aren’t on staff. On selling Ukraine right now Since the conflict in Iran began, Anna says it’s become nearly impossible to sell Ukraine stories. She arrived in Kyiv in late February specifically to begin working with a TV agency covering the war — and on the day she landed, Iran dominated the news agenda. The agency still hasn’t had a single request from any of its clients about Ukraine. This matters beyond the economics. Ukraine is still being bombarded. Massive drone and missile attacks are still happening. The human cost is still accumulating. It’s just not on the front page. On going into the morgue The story nominated for the Livingston Award is about the repatriation of Ukrainian soldiers’ bodies — the police investigators, the DNA matching, the families waiting years for news. To report it, Anna also spent time in a military morgue outside Kyiv. She’d been trying to get access for three years. When she finally got in, she was given about an hour. She describes one body in particular — an older man, beard still intact, face badly damaged — that she says she thinks about most days. What she also describes, and what I think is really important, is the delayed nature of the impact. In the moment, you’re focused on the job; you’re taking notes; you’re watching the forensic process. The weight of it doesn’t hit until later, sometimes weeks later, when you’re somewhere safer and your mind has space to process. She was living in Kyiv full-time while reporting that story, experiencing drone attacks every week. . On why she keeps going back Anna is clear that she’s not the journalist racing to the front line to film explosions. She’s interested in what she thinks is the real story of war: not the ordnance and the hardware, but the human cost. The mother trapped in a frontline town because she has no money; the men sexually assaulted by Russian troops; the families waiting for the body of a soldier who died years ago. On access — and the Hezbollah funeral One of the more remarkable parts of our conversation is about her reporting from southern Lebanon in 2024, including attending the funeral of a Hezbollah soldier. As an American journalist, in a Hezbollah-controlled town, at a funeral where the crowd was chanting death to America. She thinks being a woman helped — less visible, less threatening, easier to overlook. She was wearing a hijab. Nobody heard her speak. She got in because her translator had local roots and knew who to approach. But she’s also honest that access in places like that requires a certain willingness to be somewhere you’re technically not supposed to be, and to trust that the story is worth the discomfort. On the future Anna wants to go to Sudan. She finds it genuinely upsetting that conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa receive so little coverage. She’s also optimistic about the future of journalism. She’s not dismissing the pressures — the layoffs, the AI conversation, the editors who chase the news cycle and leave Ukraine behind. But she believes that people will eventually understand that social media and AI can’t replace real reporting from someone actually on the ground. She might be right. And if she is, it’ll be in no small part because of people like her — who went anyway, figured it out, and kept filing. Anna Conkling is an independent foreign correspondent based in Berlin. She reports for the Sunday Times, The Telegraph, Foreign Policy, the Daily Beast and Newsphere. She is a finalist for the 2025 Livingston Award. You can follow her work and support her directly via Noosphere. Get full access to Deadliners at deadliners.substack.com/subscribe
