BETWEEN KYIV AND MOSCOW: REPORTS FROM THE WAR

For four years, until 2023, it was Paul Krisai as a correspondent for ORF in Moscow; as a reporter and analyst based in Moscow, he witnessed first-hand the Putin regime’s escalation of rhetoric and military build-up, as well as the invasion of Ukraine. His colleague Vassili Golod He has been the ARD’s correspondent in Ukraine since 2022, where he heads the studio in Kyiv. For years, Golod has been a witness to the brutal war of aggression and reports daily from a country under siege.

Krisai, who now reports for ORF from Budapest, and Golod, who will be returning to Germany next spring, have witnessed how two nations that were closely intertwined, both culturally and on a human level, became bitter enemies because a dictator decided to destroy the identity of its neighbour and former brother nation. They have witnessed how resilience and defiance have grown on the one hand, whilst hardening and a will to destroy have grown on the other, and what the deaths of hundreds of thousands are doing to both societies.

It is now a rare occasion to see Ukrainians and Russians together in the same room or on the same stage. Krisai and Golod, as renowned journalists representing two Western public service broadcasters, shine in conversation with an expert on Eastern Europe Cathrin Kahlweit - drawing on their different experiences, their personal accounts, and the turmoil they witnessed in Moscow and Kyiv – they have jointly identified a conflict that seeks to eliminate Ukraine as a state and as a model of democracy, but which has also fundamentally transformed Russia and its society.