Photo essay: a war etched in pain, bewilderment and hope
Crikey associate editor Amber Schultz spent three weeks on the border with Ukraine. These are just some of the things she saw.
article-article-body About the Author
Former Associate Editor @AmberMaySchultz
Amber Schultz covered health and social affairs for Crikey. In 2022 she was awarded a Young Walkley Award for her on-the-ground coverage of the Ukrainian refugee crisis, and has been shortlisted for four other Young Walkleys. In 2021 she was awarded the 2021 Mumbrella Young Writer of the Year for her coverage of sexual violence, and in 2018 completed the Jacoby-Walkley scholarship. She holds master's degrees in journalism and international relations.
Amber, I urge you to go to East Ukraine and the Russian border and see the other side of the conflict, perhaps talk to, and take photos of people who lost their loved ones, to to the ultra-nationalist/neo-nazi Ukrainian Association of Patriots from 2014 to 2022. There were about 14,000 people mostly civilians killed. There were about 24,000 injured, thousands made homeless and/or left to become refugees in Russia. So you shouldn’t have any trouble finding them. They will be wearing white arm bands and speak Russian. They wont have NAZI insignias on them either; always a good thing.
You could also go to Odessa and talk to the relatives of people burned alive by the Ukrainian neo-nazi Right Sector for protesting against Biden and Victoria Nulands coupe de ta.
You might also like to talk to some ordinary Russians. You will find they don’t have two heads, they aren’t inherently evil like the US and UK elites. You may actually become friends with them.
Have a look at Patrick Lancaster’s YouTube reports just as a start. Have a look at some of Max Blumenthals reports, Scott Ritters, and Aron Mate’s stuff. i.e. media independent of the mainstream who are simply propagandists for the state. Another interesting character Russel bentley an American expat who is has been living in the Donbas since 2015 is also worth a look. And he’s been banned from some of the platforms, and they only do that if you go “off message” so to speak.
And food for thought:
It is a war crime to put civilians in harms way. The Azov Brigade holed up in the Azovstal plant tunnels, claim they have civilians with them, yet they won’t give the civilians safe passage out. They are using them as human shields, which is what they have done with a lot of the people living in Mariupol.
I wonder why they won’t let them leave. Maybe there aren’t any civilians there at all.
The only civilians there are being held as human shields by the Azov brigade, against the Geneva Convention and all decency.
If there are no civilians there, why has the UN negotiated a safe passage for them, aided by the Red Cross?
More to the point, IF there are any there, WHY won’t the Azov let them leave?
Perhaps because they are currently under serious fire from the Russian forces, and the facility under the steel works is the safest place to be.
You just claimed that there was safe passage – make up what passes for your ‘mind’.
Is that all you’ve got Epimenides?
There wasn’t safe passage because they were being bombarded, and it was safer to be underground.
Safe passage from Russian attack has been negotiated by the UN (apparently negotiations started a week or so ago) and civilians are currently moving to a safer environment away from bombardment.
Ergo, no probs. so why pushing on a rope and trying to carry a wheelbarrow?
Piggy was correct when he said emigration to Oz raised the average IQ of both countries.
Pity that didn’t include the ability to read & comprehend simple sentences.
Great comment. Unfortunately Schultz only does the ‘human interest’ angle and eschews any remote semblance of context or history, or basic journalism really. (More of a content filler)
All I have seen from the west is hypocrisy and double standards. We never see images like these when the west attacks another country unless they are images of people we have ‘liberated’ receiving food aid from us.
I have seen a lot of photo essays about both refugees from war zones like Syria and asylum seekers to Europe. I guess it depends what media you look at. If you don’t bother looking at a wide range of media then you won’t see essays like this.
And, of course, the refugees you see in places like Syria are the refugees fleeing our enemy, Assad or suffering under his artillery.
What we see in the Ukraine war is a 24/7 barrage of doe eyed children fleeing the Russian beasts. There was no similar barrage of doe eyed children fleeing our invasions.
The Americans killed more civilians when they invaded Panama to arrest Noriega than the Chinese killed in Tiananmen Square but which one have we all had drilled into us?
That’s a bit inexact. Double standards, yes I understand what you mean.
But we ‘never’ see images of suffering in other war zones? That’s not true. We see plenty! (But what do we do about it?)
Perhaps more accurate reflection is that the outrage seems louder in response to this Russian agression.
In other war zones we see the refugees and victims of our enemies – so in Syria for instance, all the suffering shown was in places like East Allepo which was under attack by our enemy – Assad.
Where was the similar wall to wall images of suffering civilians during our invasions of places like Iraq?
Absence of comment . . . not due to lack of response. Rather, tears, frustration freeze and block!
Thanks again for all your reporting. Making it human and real. And doing so for these victims and certainly directing my empathy (and anger) out in the cause of all the others around the world, whose lives are being wantonly destroyed by the powerful, who inflict wars and suffering on them.
The lack of comment may be due to the growing number of readers becoming aware of the blatantly obvious manipulative intent of these images.
MadMen on steroids.
Look at the set-ups, cropping to exclude backgrounds, emo. rating, the obvious agitprop of the agenda.
Ray Bradbury’s White Clown drools and the peeps lap it up.
All propagandists are liars.
And useless idiots their fools.
Does that include
cretinsCretans?