May 3, 2022 • 50 mins
With the Russian invasion of Ukraine stretching into its third month, the Ukrainian people continue to valiantly fight for their right to sovereignty and democracy. Our guests today join Alec to discuss the situation on the ground in Ukraine and how they are working to ensure the stories of the Ukrainian people reach the world. Bryce Wilson is an Australian freelance photojournalist whose work has focused on the war and humanitarian crisis in Ukraine’s east since 2015. He shares his experiences embedding with the Ukrainian special forces unit and reporting from the first days of the invasion. Ida Sawyer is the director of Human Rights Watch's Crisis and Conflict division, which investigates and reports on human rights abuses happening around the world. Sawyer shares the organization’s findings of Russian military forces committing laws-of-war violations against civilians in Ukraine.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from My Heart Radio. On the February two thousand two,
while the world watched on in horror and disbelief, Russian
forces invaded the independent nation of Ukraine. While Ukrainian forces
(00:23):
continue to fight for democracy, their right to sovereignty, and
the soul of their country. My guests today are working
to ensure their stories are told. Ida Sawyer is the
director of the Crisis and Conflict Division at Human Rights Watch.
The organization is currently on the ground documenting alleged war
(00:45):
crimes in Ukraine. Sawyer shared with us some of their
devastating findings and what the organization plans to do with
these reports. But first I'm talking with Australian photojournalist Bryce Wilson.
Wilson has documented the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine since two
thousand fifteen. He was the first Australian journalist to embed
(01:09):
with the Ukrainian Special Forces covering the conflict in the
don Bass region. His work has been featured on ABC Australia,
The Daily Mail and Sky News, and despite his resistance
to social media, Wilson's Instagram and Twitter feed provided a
gripping account of the front lines of the Russian invasion.
(01:31):
That's crazy. I can't believe that Russia has declared war
in Ukraine. As soon as the declaration, Oh, that's a missile.
That's a missile. That's a missile. Bryce Wilson joined me
at five am Australian time, after returning home for a
(01:52):
well deserved break from reporting in Ukraine. I wanted to
know how he found his way to conflict photo journalism.
I found photography through a hobby, so initially I did
do quite general work like that, like did some food photography,
did photographs of my friends, made portraits. The war in
(02:15):
Ukraine was in Australian television a lot because Australians were
killed when Flight MH seventeen was shut down and the
news coverage sort of stopped around the war. And then
I realized that with the skills and the equipment that
I had, I could probably do my own photojournalism. And
that's when I went to Ukraine the first time. In
(02:37):
Who Sent You There? I was freelancing, so I had
just lost a job and I used my redundancy payout
to fund my work in Ukraine that first time, and
maybe naively. I contacted the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense and
they told me that even freelance media could embed with
(02:58):
the military so long as I leaded some forms and
had body armor and everything. So yeah, in about I
went to Ukraine for the first time with my gear
and the cash REMI redundancy pay out and just figured
out how to do journalism. And ever since then, that
was kind of the catalyst for why I returned, because
(03:21):
the relationships that I had made with people there from
my first experiences in many ways stuck with me and
they're still the same people. I'm still in touch with
a lot of the people I met during that in
bed and they've all helped me with my work as
it has continued. So I'm assuming that that you had
no formal training in terms of photojournalism or journalism from
(03:43):
my radio and it is he's shaking his head no,
with a sly smile in his face. So no formal
training in photojournalism, the answer is no, correct. Yeah, even
education wise, my background was in writing, and professionally I
was working in different creative services agencies. Like I had
all these fundamental little skills that were a bigger part
(04:05):
of doing multimedia production work, but no formal training in
journalism or anything related to that. So the embedded was
your first real assignment of something that's would be a
precursor of the work you've been doing, and you're there,
what was going on in that you were chronicling. So
(04:26):
the assignment that I had sent myself on that was
my first practical experience doing journalism, and it was very
much a thing of lean in the field because the
place where I was sent was a small town very
close to the Donetsk airport, which is just on the
fringe of one of the occupied capital cities in the east,
(04:50):
where there is now a major escalation seemingly imminent. I
just say that because after the Russian military's goals Kiev
region and throughout Ukraine have evolved a little bit. They're
now focusing on the eastern part of Ukraine and they're
talking about that being the primary objective. So it seems
(05:11):
to me very likely that there will be a major
escalation of the war in that area, specifically, not just
in Kiev and western Ukraine. And so back then a
war has been going on in Ukraine for eight years.
The Russian military annexed Crimea and then was directly involved
(05:32):
in in essentially fomenting a separatist uprising in some parts
of the country. Small groups of people that wanted to
break away from Ukraine, very small groups of people, received
military support, funding as well as espionage level stuff from
(05:54):
the Russian military and government, and they broke off two
parts of eastern Ukraine called the Donetsk People's Republic and
the Luhansk People's Republic. Those territories actually occupied a lot
of eastern Ukraine, and then from the Ukrainian military and
a lot of those were volunteers, pushed the so called
(06:18):
People's Republic's military forces very close to the border with Russia,
and then the Russian military launched an incursion, sent their
military over the border from Russia into Ukraine to fight
the Ukrainian military. Since then, a number of somewhat effective
ceasefires have been implemented called the Mintsk Agreements, and those
(06:42):
Minsk agreements largely froze the front line and conflict in
place where it was before this current invasion started. So
when I went there in for the first time, there
were still significant fighting every day. So the Russia said
them doing little out of town tryouts. If you would
(07:04):
have been doing a lot of little rehearsals for this
big invasion for quite a while now, correct. Yeah, it's
a really great way to put it. And I think
the thing that separates now versus previously the Russian military,
for example, when they shot down Flight MH seventeen, there
was a whole bunch of shadow play and trickery around.
(07:26):
You know, it wasn't us, it was people that had
our hardware. We're not actually in the dom bus. It's
people that found our tanks. There was this joke that
they were miners and they found all this equipment stored underground.
There was all this proof that heavily implicated the Russian
military as having been in the east of Ukraine, but
they wouldn't really play into the uncertainty of it all.
(07:48):
And it was almost a proxy war where the Russian
military was directly involved in on the ground, but they
hid behind the idea that it was separatists doing this,
the rebels. Yes, and they blamed it on separatists and
your rebels in Dulansk and Donetsk, correct, because you were
there for both of those, correct incursions, and and so,
(08:09):
but there were no direct Soviet troops on the ground,
tanks and weaponry or were there there were so Russian
military hardware and soldiers were present at some of the
largest battles in the bus in the early days of
the war, and because the Ukrainian military counter offensive to
(08:33):
recapture the occupied territories was so effective, the so called
separatist forces were pushed very close to the Russian border,
and that's when the Russian military started launching artillery strikes
from across the Russian border into Ukraine. They sent their
military forces in to fight the Ukrainian military actively, and
(08:54):
the battles where the Russian military participated then was some
of the most bloody in the history of the war
at that point. And in one battle, for example, called
illa Weis, a large percentage of the Ukrainian armed forces
were encircled and during a breakout humanitarian corridor which was
offered by the Russian military, a large convoy of Ukrainian
(09:17):
military personnel left and then the Russian military bombarded that
convoy with artillery and indirect fire and it killed potentially
up to a thousand people. During these don Bass battles
that you covered in six seven years ago were atrocities
playing then when you hear reports about what's going on
(09:38):
in Ukraine now? Does it match what you saw years ago?
I mean as a matter of what level, because I
saw atrocious things I saw still it's very surreal to
me because the scenes and events I'm seeing now did
take place seven years ago. I saw destroyed neighborhoods, maimed bodies,
(10:00):
missing legs, civilians, homes are destroyed, civilians killed by the war.
I saw mass graves, not on the same scale, but
graves where the local separatist forces in that area had
just dumped people. Civilians from the nearby area dumped their
own dead personnel when they left. A lot of the
(10:21):
events that we're seeing now did take place then, It's
just the scale now, I think, because of that same
reason that the Russian forces were not their quote unquote,
there was a lot more subterfuge, whereas now that it's
all out in the open and not in the shadows,
everything has been ramped up and scaled up significantly. So therefore,
(10:42):
I'm assuming you you weren't surprised at all when things
took the turn they took this year. It was heading
in that direction, correct. I felt like in the days
before the invasion was announced, I was already out in
the don Bus reporting on infrastructure damage in don Bus,
which had been a big focus of my word, And
I was given information from contacts within the security services
(11:06):
setting very clear dates when they expected that the invasion
would take place, and I will say that they were
very accurate. The dates that they provided turned out to
be correct retroactively, and the invasion was actually moved by
the Russian military and government, and the dates I was
given are initially were spot on accurate. And then I
(11:30):
have friends that were serving in the military and they
were telling me to We're being told we can't leave
the base. We're being told that we should prepare that
the invasion is likely to start tomorrow. So a couple
of days out I knew pretty definitively that it was happening.
But weeks beforehand, I was there to report on the
escalation that was already taken place, because in the days
(11:53):
and weeks leading up to the invasion, there was fighting
in the Dumbus like I'd never experienced before, the severity
of artillery, the damage to homes, cease, five violations, civilians
being killed, like it all objectively increased exponentially in the
like two weeks before the war started. When you show
(12:13):
up there to don Buss again a few years later,
that you know the lay of the land obviously, you
know the territory, you know where to go to be
safe for their place, like where does Bryce Wilson sleep?
Who's paying the bill? When you go on these freelance projects,
you have to fund this yourself. We did somebody pay
for it. I had some offers to help with funding,
(12:36):
but I didn't align with the organization's ethically. They were
sort of towing almost this pro Russian media viewpoint, which
was very concerning for me. But for all intents and purposes,
all of my work since I started has been funded
by myself. This was the first time that I've had
any moderate commercial success for my work, But making money
(12:58):
from doing it had never been a big priority to me.
Like again, maybe naively, I thought there was like a
paragon sort of value in journalism and the value of
it to society, and that was the main motivator for me.
So if I'm doing an assignment in somewhere like don Bus,
(13:18):
I would stay in a city or a town very
close to the front line, and then each day we
would drive out to the areas where we needed to
go to do reporting. But even thirty or forty kilometers
away from the front line, life is relatively normal. In
the evenings, I would go to a bar with some
of my colleagues and we would eat a pizza for
(13:40):
dinner and maybe have a beer or something like this.
Like it's very surreal because in Key of for example,
before the current invasion, people would live very normally and
you could almost fault them for that, like forgetting there
was a war seven hundred kilometers away. But people even
thirty kilometers away from the front line would forget there
(14:02):
was a war at times, and that was very strange.
Why do you think that is a sense something peculiar
to them? I mean, even in the United States, someone
said to me that nine eleven will eventually take its
place alongside Pearl Harbor. It will become a very distant
memory and Americans will forget this almost inconceivable event that
(14:24):
happened here in New York and two one. But there's
nothing peculiar to the Ukrainian nature that makes them want
to carry on with life as they live it. Where
is there some where is there something unique about them
you've found? I mean, there are lots of things that
are unique about Ukrainian people. One example I can give
I was working in a village which had just been
(14:47):
struck by artillery. A person's home was completely destroyed, their
neighbors homes were destroyed. They were quite literally pulling the
bodies of their neighbors out of homes around them. And
I with my colleagues we hadn't eaten that day, and
they just made us food in the destroyed ruins of
(15:07):
their homes while they themselves were struggling. I've never experienced
hospitality on that level before, and I don't know if
anyone would help people in that instance, but we were
just strange people, media personalities. There was me and two
people who just came to them and they fed us
out of the kindness of their own hearts. And I
(15:29):
think that, to me was probably one of the most
unique experiences I had during my assignment. I don't know
how people live so close to the front line and
kind of forget about the war, but I think it
is because primarily the war had been going on for
eight years at this point. It's part of the everyday
fabric of life in some areas. Almost esthetically too, there's
(15:50):
a whole culture around the conflict in Eastern Ukraine lives
people go from checkpoints from one side of the contact
line to the other every day. Like there's whole micro
society and culture and experience of life solely because of
the war that had been going on for eight years
at that point. I also think that where you have
(16:12):
extended conflicts like Vietnam and so forth, that people decide,
this is my opinion, they make a decision to carry
on with life as they know it because you know
it could be over tomorrow. You know, you can live
in fear, or you can try to normalize things to
the best of your ability and try to you know,
raise your children and grow your food or obviously I'm
(16:33):
talking about Southeast Asia now. But one thing I'm wondering,
what would you say is your understanding of what percentage
what fraction is it a significant fraction of people who
want to reunify with Russia. What percentage of the Ukrainian
people are Russian sympathizers from your experience. In my experience,
even in the East, I met very few people that
(16:56):
truly wanted that unification. There's a lot of information around
why the separatist republics exist, What are their motivators, what
is the true support numbers? And to the best of
my knowledge, even earlier in the war, like in the
days before the separatists sort of uprisings happened, it was
single percentage figures and low single percentage figures. And as
(17:18):
time has gone on the eastern areas there's been a
mass exodus of people into government controlled territories. And now
I believe that a significant percentage of people that have
received Russian passports and there's a whole I guess, absorption
of that region into Russia effectively. But in my experience
(17:40):
from west to east of the country, north to south,
like pre and during the war, I never met anybody
that truly supported this sentiment that like we in Ukraine
want to be a part of Russia. It's not to
say that they don't exist. I talked with people that
had more pro Russian ideologies, but I never met someone
our right, Is it just about tradition? What is it
(18:03):
about Russia let alone? What is it about Putin that
they want to align themselves with that government in that country?
I think yes. So many people in those areas might
have had memories of when the Soviet Union was a
bigger part of their lives and economically, especially in the
dom bast During the height of the USSR and the
(18:25):
history of the Soviet Empire, the Dombas was a major
economical center. It's where a lot of the mining infrastructure is.
There was a lot of science and metallurgical studies and
stuff that took place out there. People in those areas
lived pretty good lives at the height of the USSR.
Some people I talked to were or One of the
(18:47):
guys was a driver that I worked with. He was
a former marine in the Russian military. He deployed to Afghanistan.
His memories and experiences of life are completely different than
someone is living on their pench and struggling. I met
another person who lived in Donetsk during sort of more
economically affluent times, and they shared similar things, like all
(19:10):
they knew was under Ukrainian control, that the area had
fallen into disrepair and things like this, and they, I
guess associated that their lives were better when Russia was
in control of that area. When you started out and
you had to teach yourself the business of photojournalism, especially
an a war torn country, what was some of the
(19:30):
most important things you had to learn upfront, And what
do you wish you knew? What do you wish you
do knew then that you know now? What have you
learned about the job? I wish when I started I
had better language skills, because for the first couple of
times I went there, I didn't speak any local languages,
and when I would come back home, I was taking
(19:52):
Russian language classes and practicing through the internet and everything too.
And I wish I'd have started that process sooner, because
even an extra year, an extra eighteen months of practice
probably would have been hugely beneficial to my work and skills.
And I think to one thing I realized is doing
this sort of work like it does have a toll.
(20:14):
It takes a toll on you. And for me, it's
this realization when you witness life and these events, that
it changes your whole perception of even your reality back home.
And that's what you can't undo. For me, at least
filters or affects the filter or the lens through which
you see your life. And after I went there and
(20:37):
have worked there, changed a lot of the things that
I think about life, philosophically, practically, professionally, socially like it.
It made me a much different person. Now you do
some of your reporting, or you post some of your
stuff on social media. Correct, that's correct. I'd used Twitter
(20:59):
primarily for my work, and then during the early days
of the invasion I was live streaming updates to people
on Instagram. How has that changed the way you work?
I mean, having that immediacy and posting your own stuff.
Do you find that beneficial? When the invasion started in
the city I was in. Within seconds or minutes of
(21:20):
putt into Claring war, they were already dropping bombs very
close to my house, and I recognized that the war
had started, and I put my body armor on and
started live streaming. So from literally the earliest minutes of
the war, I was live streaming to tens of thousands
of people on Instagram, and that in and of itself
(21:42):
is such a fundamental change to the way that people
consume news and media. Like I didn't need to go
on television to inform and share news with people. I
was literally from the palm of my hand, from my iPhone,
streaming to people all around the world. And at one moment,
Russian cruise missile flew no more than fifty meters above
(22:05):
my head and I was live streaming that and showing
people that in real time, and then that clip went viral,
as people say, and it was almost like a defining
moment of the first day of the invasion, like the
footage of that event. But I went from being someone
who was very fundamentally antisocial media, like I used it
(22:26):
as little as possible, two a large percentage of my
work being attributed to social media. So it's been for
me a very It's like a contradiction in terms of
how I want to conduct myself. But social media and
the new Internet and new media has changed my life
in a big way. Photojournalist Bryce Wilson. If you'd like
(22:50):
more insight into the history of the Russia Ukraine crisis,
check out my interview with New York Times correspondent and
Putin biographer Stephen Lee Meyer. His book, The News Are
The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin chronicles the ascent
of the Russian president. Putin only one of the vote,
(23:10):
and you know, it wasn't a slam dunk. And since
then Putin made sure that the ways the elections are managed, um,
there's no uncertainty in the voting. He stripped them of
the competitive uncertainty that makes them truly democratic, either in
terms of who can run and then the actual voting itself,
because transitions in Russia have never gone well. Even during
(23:31):
the Empire, it was always tumultuous. Here more of my
conversation with author Stephen Lee Myers that Here's the Thing
dot org. After the break, Bryce Wilson tells us why
the Ukrainian forces are some of the best and most
experienced in the world. I'm Alec Baldwin and you were
(24:03):
listening to Here's the Thing. Photo journalist Bryce Wilson spent
the last few months in Ukraine reporting on the Russian invasion.
His breath taking first person live streams show the world
what it feels like to be on the front lines.
I wanted to know if the balance of power is
affected by the Ukrainian forces preparedness or the Russian forces
(24:26):
lack thereof. It's definitely both. The Russian military is critically
underperforming in every facet, logistically, war fighting, the equipment itself, maintenance.
There are so many facets as to why the Russian
military performance has been what it is. But the Ukrainian
armed forces too in the dumbas tens of thousands hundreds
(24:51):
of thousands of Ukrainian military personnel have done deployment in
the active war zone. The Armed Forces of Ukraine, in
my opinion, are probably the most contemporarily experienced military in
the world. They are trained extensively over the last eight years.
They're motivated to defend their homes. They're equipped like there
(25:12):
are so many variables that go into why they've been
so effective. But I do believe that people overestimated the
Russian military capabilities and underestimated the Ukrainian military's capabilities. Did
the citizens of Ukraine. Were they surprised that the Russians
invader They weren't surprised. I think people were absolutely surprised
(25:33):
that people I speak to from the east to the west.
Even leading up to the invasion, people were still convinced
it's not going to happen. It's you know, this is
just fear mongering. And I think in many ways people
were conditioned because of the eight years of war. They
didn't understand how to view the threat objectively or in context.
Even when the invasion came on the morning there were
(25:55):
bombs falling in the city and Chromatosk, where I was,
and I was talking to people who were casually going
to work. Still they were saying, like, well, I've got
to go to my job, like I have a duty.
I won't stop working until like I'm told to. Essentially, So,
I think up until the very the last moment, people
were convinced that wasn't going to happen. And even when
(26:16):
the war did happen, people were still leaving evacuation essentially
until there were bombs landing at the end of their street. Like,
I don't think anybody took the threat or the risks seriously,
and I don't know why. As I described the war
and dumbus, it was a shadow play that was subterfusion trickery.
The Russian military is there, but they're not saying they're there.
(26:39):
There's a huge difference between a proxy war like that
and an active, full scale, multifront invasion of an independent nation.
But even myself, professionally and personally, I couldn't imagine that
it was going to happen. Just the scale of something
like that is so history changing. To send tens of
(27:01):
thousands of guys rolling across the border with tanks and
planes and fighter jets, bombers, naval support, just the whole
thing that just the scale I think boggles the mind.
But what do you think the Russians want? Do they
want to just destroy things? Is putting someone who just
wants to have a military conquest and then leave and
(27:24):
there's no political aftermath. What's his goal? What does he want? Well, me, personally,
I just see this as a continuation of Russian hostilities
towards Ukraine and the concept of Ukrainian independence. This has
been perpetuated for centuries historically the occupying power in the
(27:45):
area of Russia. They have forcefully starved millions of people.
During the whole Lotimore, there were political persecutions against people
in Ukraine. The Ukrainian language was essentially forbidden. This to me,
one element of it is just a continuation of this
anti Ukrainian sentiment in the context of them existing as
(28:05):
an independent state, because even in recent days there have
been comments from Russian political leaders where they have essentially said,
we think it's even offensive that the idea of Ukraine
even exists, like it's just another part of Russia. So
I think the military goal in the early days really
was to capture Kiev, and I think that the Russian
(28:28):
military and their analysts expected that the Ukrainian military and
government would just capitulate very quickly and turnover. That hasn't
happened now and now I think the goal is to
show through capturing the east and the south of the
country that it wasn't in vain. Essentially, the Russian military
could level the whole country, and in some places I
(28:49):
went to whole villages and cities are just destroyed by
bombing and people volunteers. I would go there and help
reconstruct this place. It's a country I love, My friends
are there. I would be involved. I'm sure tens of
thousands of people from around the world will go and help. Yes,
yes they will. Ultimately, this is just an attempt to
(29:11):
intimidate the concept of Ukraine being an independent nation. And
whatever their objectives were, if it was to force the
capitulation of the country, I don't think it will happen.
Based on the current trend. How do you think this
is going to end? I'm not sure. My my gut
feeling around how the conflict would continue or end was
(29:32):
always that there would be a major escalation of fighting
in the East because it's territory that Russia had previously
attempted to take, whether directly or indirectly. I believe that
the war fighting there could potentially continue for years, as
it already has. I don't expect that Kiev will be occupied.
I don't expect that the majority of Ukraine will be occupied,
(29:55):
but I think areas where the Russian border in Ukrainian
border exists, there will be ongoing fighting for months potentially,
And I think really it's a matter of time before
the sanctions and also economic situation in Russia begins to
become a bit of a problem. But I don't expect
that the Ukrainian military or its people will lose their
(30:17):
will to continue fighting. And when stuff like the mosque
for being sunk happens, it's a huge morale boost for people.
So I think it's just a matter of time before
there are concessions and maybe the peace talks continue. But
I do suspect that fighting in the East will continue
for months or years. Do you think that having any
(30:38):
effect on the Russians. I'm not really sure the machinations
of it all. I just know on the ground, because
I have people in my close personal life who have
relationships with people in Russia, that it's making a difference.
This is affecting the way people live their lives, and
I would assume, maybe naively, that when the average persons
(30:59):
lie starts being affected, that's when they actually get involved
with sort of pushing for change. Now, of course, one
of the quickest ways you can engender supporting the American people.
They talk about war crimes and talk about you know,
gases and so forth. Either you under are you under
the impression that the Russians are actually committing war crimes
over there? Yes, it's my opinion based on things that
(31:21):
I saw, witnessed read, have had reported to me that
the Russian military is conducting war crimes in those areas.
I saw people who were executed while they were bound.
I've had reports independently verified to me by multiple organizations
of just agrees your sexual assault, often on some children.
(31:44):
I've also heard reports that people are being forcibly taken
and sexually assaulted. And I did read a report that
someone had been taken from one of the previously occupied
parts of Kiev and then dumped at the border after
they've basically been raped by the military. Looting has been
taken place, and there was a story of a Russian
(32:05):
soldier stealing a MacBook and he took the armor plate
out of his vest and put the MacBook in there
to hide it, and he ended up being shot, and
the MacBook is actually why he was killed. If he
was wearing his armor, he probably would have survived the bullet.
So there's like mass war crimes going on in the
previously occupied areas, and I hate to think what's happening
(32:28):
in places where there's not so much media coverage, because
the mass influx of journalists into those previously occupied areas
is why they discovered so many atrocities. What's your evaluation
of Zelenski and what do you see in country? What
do people there? Does he enjoy the reputation that he
has here in the United States, and how do people
(32:49):
feel about him over there. I was at Zelenski's inauguration
many years ago, and it's very surreal for me to
have seen this huge narrative of his director quite literally
a character, because he has an acting background and he's
a very interesting person. But he, in my opinion, will
(33:10):
be remembered in the same vein as famous Ukrainian poets,
people who were invested in the idea of Ukraine's independence,
like Zelensky, in my opinion, is a hero through his leadership,
and if Ukraine falls, it means his family are affected
to it means he's at risk. He was at risk
of being assassinated many times. He's not running away, he's
(33:33):
not leaving. He's doing what I think many Ukrainian people
identify with, and that's sticking up for his country. And
I think that's why many Ukrainians are very proud of him,
and it shows that the people stand with him and
they identify with what he is doing. Are you going
to go back, Yes, I'm sure that my work in
(33:53):
Ukraine will continue indefinitely. Like my goal, I don't want
to be a war journalists specific clear, my work and
interest is Ukraine. The experiences I've had there and the
things I've learned have changed me a lot, and I
really appreciate even when I have opportunities like this to
share with people, because I think, as you said, this
(34:13):
war brought a lot of attention to Ukraine, but things
have been going on there for eight years and twenty
years before that and thirty years before that, and I
think it's such a diverse and rich part of the
world and rich region, and I'm still discovering things and
I hope I'll be able to continue sharing that with people. Well, listen,
thank you for your time. I really appreciate it. I'm
(34:35):
really grateful for the opportunity. Thank you photo journalist Bryce Wilson.
If you're enjoying this conversation, don't keep it to yourself,
Tell a friend and follow here's the thing on the
I Heart radio app, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
When we come back, i'd A Sawyer of Human Rights
(34:57):
Watch discusses the documentation of Russia's human rights abuses in Ukraine.
I'm Alec Baldwin and this is here's the thing. When
(35:19):
the recent atrocities in Bucha were reported, it became clear
that these events were violations of the international humanitarian law
and the Geneva Conventions. Ida Sawyer is the director of
the Crisis and Conflict Division for Human Rights Watch. Sawyer
spent eight years on the ground in the Democratic Republic
(35:39):
of Congo covering human rights abuses and supervised teams in
Syria and Yemen. Ida Sawyer told me about the primary
objective of her organization. Human Rights Watch where an international
non governmental human rights organization. So we work in over
ninety countries around the world, and we document human rights abuses,
(36:03):
so that's attacks on civilians, laws of war violations during
armed conflicts, women's rights violations, children's rights, refugees rights issues,
and we go out we collect the facts. We have
over five hundred staff working around the world. We speak
to victims and witnesses and others, try to figure out
(36:24):
what happened, and then we publish our findings in reports
and other documents, videos, and then we push for for justice,
so we push for those most responsible for the abuses
to be held to account, and then we also push
for policy changes to to end the abuses that we've documented.
What do areas of the world that have chronic human
(36:47):
rights issues? What do those areas of the world. Is
there something that they have in common? Is it a
lockdown on the media and dictatorial control of the country.
Do you find human rights abuses flourish in places like
that more readily? Yes, definitely. I mean there are they're
different kinds of chronic human rights abuses in different regions,
(37:07):
but I think in in countries where you have more
authoritarian governments, where you don't have freedom of expression, freedom
of the press, and there's crackdowns on political opposition, leaders,
journalist activists. That's where we see some of the worst abuses,
and that can sometimes be related to abuses linked to
(37:28):
access to healthcare, education, and those sorts of human rights
as well. For most people, when the conflict between Ukraine
and Russia, when Putin and Zelinski look like they're going
to go to another level. You know, many Americans, and
this is very common in America, they sit there like, yeah,
(37:50):
what's Russia's beef with the Ukraine? You know, I mean, like,
what's there? It's all new information for them, and so
for you, did you know this was coming? Yeah, I
mean we were definitely watching it closely. In our Ukraine
team we have we have a researcher working full time
on Ukraine and our broader Europe and Central Asia team
have been working on on the conflict in Ukraine since
(38:11):
two thousand fourteen. And since I've started being focusing so
closely on this, every Ukrainian you talked to reminds, you know,
the war didn't start in February. This has been going on,
So it's definitely something that we were aware of. And
then by late last year earlier this year, it seemed
more and more likely that it would really escalate. You're
(38:33):
hearing some pretty ugly horrible stories about abuses there and
that Putin and the Russians are war criminals and they're
doing all kinds of horrible things. Your organization, you have
people on the ground there in Ukrainei ass m. Yes,
we don't, and the report to you that they see
this themselves, they have first hand knowledge of these things themselves. Correct. Yes, yes,
(38:57):
So that's what our teams are doing, and that's really
trying to understand the context for the violations that are reported. So,
for example, there's been so much attention on Bucha. So
that's the area just north of Kiev that the Russian
forces retreated from and that's allowed Ukrainian authorities to retake control.
Journalists and others now have access, and we're seeing just
(39:21):
horrific images of the trail of violence that the Russian
forces left behind, Bodies strewn along the streets, reports of
mass graves and and just all of this violence and destruction.
But what our team there is doing is trying to
understand Okay, yes many people died, but how did they
die and what were the circumstances and does this amount
(39:43):
to war crimes? How did they die? And what were
the circumstances. So our team is they're documenting now and
it's it's clear that the Russian forces occupied this area
from around March fourth until March thirty one, and there
wasn't one single massacre, but there were a series of
many different incidents, lots of summary executions as well as
(40:07):
other cases of targeted killings and indiscriminate attacks on civilians.
So what we've seen is Russian forces going door to door,
interrogating the men and then sometimes dragging them out and
either shooting them on their yard in front of their house,
or in some cases taking them to a detention center
that they had set up, and then later their families
(40:28):
would find that they've been killed, sometimes with a bullet
to the head, and their bodies lying on the street
or behind different buildings. We've also seen just indiscriminate attacks,
sometimes if people who were sheltering in their basements came
out to look for food, or in one case a
man went out on his balcony to smoke a cigarette
(40:49):
and he was shot in the neck. So that's sort
of just violence at indiscriminate violence against civilians. And then
when when you say indiscriminate I mean, I appreciate that
much of it is indiscriminate or also in addition, are
there some instances where the Russians have sympathizers there or
they have people who out of fear, are providing them
(41:09):
with information and saying ten seventeen Main Street, down the
block there, ten seventeen leon Ede bregion of boulevard, head
down there, and that guy is part of a cell,
and that guy is part of the troublemakers. Are a
lot of people getting ratted out there, So there are
a lot of people capitulating and helping the Russians to
(41:30):
identify these people to send shock ways of terror throughout
the communities that they're in. So what we've seen in Buscha,
it's not clear that they're targeting any members of particular selves.
What they say is that they're quote hunting Nazis and
they're definitely looking for weapons in people's houses and anyone
(41:52):
with potential connections to the territorial defense forces. But many
of the cases that we've documented it doesn't appear that
the individuals who were who were targeted had any links
to military groups or or otherwise. But we have heard
cases in other areas that the Russian forces have occupied
of specific targeted attacks against, for example, journalists and activists
(42:15):
and others who they might deem to be a particular
threat to them. So when you go there, what possible
hope do you have of changing the situation in a
place with someone who is as unilateral as Putin is?
I mean Putin is rolling those I mean the Russian
army is a kick ass army. They got it all.
They got all the bombs and planes, that's whether that's
(42:36):
what they spend their money on. They don't feed their people,
they don't take care of their people. What hope do
you have of possibly negotiating with Putin? How do you
feel about that? Do you think there's any hope that
this is going to end? I think there is hope,
And I think that what we've seen in other in
other cases is that it can often take time, but
that if there is enough pressure and if the documentation
(43:00):
is there, you can see people being brought to justice.
And I think something that's really surprised me, and I've
never experienced this and other conflicts that I've worked on,
is just how quickly the international community mobilized and the
International Criminal Board launched an investigation right away. The United
Nations Human Rights Council launched a commission of inquiry. There's
(43:22):
been all of this pressure and and Prudent hasn't felt
to this pressure before, so it might take time, but
I think that there is a possibility that we could
see see justice, but we have to keep pushing forward.
And I think it's important also to remember that the
types of crimes that we're seeing and we're documenting in
Ukraine now, they're very similar to crimes that our team
(43:45):
documented in Syria several years ago committed by Russian forces.
Some of these same commanders were involved, and they got
away with it, and they were never held to account,
and that impunity has helped facilitate has allowed to continue
with these same sorts of abuses that we're seeing now
in Ukraine. So I really hope, you know, with all
(44:05):
of this mobilization, that we're seeing, this pressure, these investigations
that have started, that will actually finally see some justice
this time. Do you have any hope that the Russians
will get kicked out of the Security Council. I think
we're a long way from that, but they were just
voted out of the Human Rights Council so I think
(44:25):
that sends an initial important signal that they really have
no place They're given this the horrific crimes that are
being committed now, at the very least in terms of appearances.
I have a lot of faith in the United Nations
and I hope that they do kick them out of
the Security Council. As you said, it's a it's a
long shot, but I think that we need to We
need to have people come to the table who recognize
(44:47):
that war itself is obsolete. That precisely what the Russians
are doing now is obsolete. You can't go in there
and completely level a whole country, rely on Western count
used to come in and clean up the mess. And
I feel like someone's got to be able to negotiate
with them and start a global introduction of an idea
(45:09):
that war itself as a war crime. Forget about there's
things you can't do during war. You can't do war,
you know. I mean, how do we make war itself obsolete? Now? Um,
do you think that sanctions work? I think they can
work here. I think it's also a question of are
(45:29):
they being implemented? So are you are we actually looking
for all of the resources that these individuals have and
making sure they're being seized. There's a question of network sanctions,
so not just the individuals, but those in the companies
that are connected to them but hidden a bit, making
sure they're targeted as well. There's this muscle you developed
(45:51):
very keenly to look at what people do to abuse
political power. Has it effective when you come home as
Human Rights Watch ever brought a case against an American government, Yes, definitely.
So we have our US program is actually our biggest
country program. So we do a lot of work here
in the US. And so I was in New York
(46:13):
before moving back to d C and worked in on
a lot of the police violence and abuse during the
George Floyd protests, and we did we did a big
project on the crackdown in mod Haven and the South
Bronx and just documented how the police, the NYPD kettled
(46:34):
protesters there and then just used complete unprovoked violence, beating up,
cracking down on these protesters um and really worked with
other groups to push for push for some accountability. We
also did work around voting rights during the last elections,
and then we also look at the conduct of US
(46:55):
forces internationally and strikes on civilian target for example, and
pushing for for accountability, reparations and that type of thing.
So we we definitely do work on the US And yes,
definitely big focus. You've dedicated your life to this incredibly
(47:18):
difficult work. You know, it's it's ugly. You learn the
realities of a lot of horrible things that have been
happening to people. What keeps you wanting to do this work? Yeah,
I mean I think it is we do hear a
lot of just really horrible stories about the worst of humanity,
but we also I feel like people want their story
(47:39):
to be told. They want people to know what they
what they experienced, what they suffered. So we do play
an important role in giving giving their stories a voice.
And then it's also when we do have successes, so
when we finally see justice, um and and like it's
it's seeing that that we can make make a difference.
(48:00):
What is victory for Human Rights Watch? What is justice? Yeah?
So I think one of one of the big victories
we had was with Bosco and Tegonda. So he was
a warlord from an armed group backed by neighboring Rwanda,
and we had documented his crimes for over a decade.
Mass large scale massacres, mass rapes, sexual violence, he himself
(48:26):
had raped women who were held under under their control,
recruitment of children, just a lidany of abuses that we documented,
and eventually the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant
for him and he was transferred to the Hague and
put on trial and later convicted for war crimes and
(48:46):
crimes against humanity. So I think he is in prison, Yeah,
in the Hague. He's in prison in the Netherlands, yes,
But what sentence was he given? So thirty years? He
was sentenced to thirty years for war crimes or human
rights abuses in the Hague. This guy, Wow, that's that's
that's amazing. To get a guy like that, who's real,
who a real kingpin, a guy who was a lot
(49:09):
of murder and death and blood on his hands and
has destroyed the lives of countless people. To see that
guy get locked up in prisoner must have been very,
very satisfying. Well, as you're another spot in the world,
is Ida Sawyer headed somewhere? You don't have to say,
But do you have another location you want to go
to next? Well? I am probably heading to Ukraine next week.
(49:30):
So keeping the focus there for yeah, well listen. Thank
you so much for joining us, and if you do
head over there, please be careful. Thank you so much.
My thanks to Ida Sawyer and Bryce Wilson. This episode
(49:50):
was produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach McNeice, and Maureen Hoban.
Our engineer is Frank Imperial. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the
thing is brought to you buy iHeart Radio
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from My Heart Radio. On the February two thousand two,
while the world watched on in horror and disbelief, Russian
forces invaded the independent nation of Ukraine. While Ukrainian forces
(00:23):
continue to fight for democracy, their right to sovereignty, and
the soul of their country. My guests today are working
to ensure their stories are told. Ida Sawyer is the
director of the Crisis and Conflict Division at Human Rights Watch.
The organization is currently on the ground documenting alleged war
(00:45):
crimes in Ukraine. Sawyer shared with us some of their
devastating findings and what the organization plans to do with
these reports. But first I'm talking with Australian photojournalist Bryce Wilson.
Wilson has documented the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine since two
thousand fifteen. He was the first Australian journalist to embed
(01:09):
with the Ukrainian Special Forces covering the conflict in the
don Bass region. His work has been featured on ABC Australia,
The Daily Mail and Sky News, and despite his resistance
to social media, Wilson's Instagram and Twitter feed provided a
gripping account of the front lines of the Russian invasion.
(01:31):
That's crazy. I can't believe that Russia has declared war
in Ukraine. As soon as the declaration, Oh, that's a missile.
That's a missile. That's a missile. Bryce Wilson joined me
at five am Australian time, after returning home for a
(01:52):
well deserved break from reporting in Ukraine. I wanted to
know how he found his way to conflict photo journalism.
I found photography through a hobby, so initially I did
do quite general work like that, like did some food photography,
did photographs of my friends, made portraits. The war in
(02:15):
Ukraine was in Australian television a lot because Australians were
killed when Flight MH seventeen was shut down and the
news coverage sort of stopped around the war. And then
I realized that with the skills and the equipment that
I had, I could probably do my own photojournalism. And
that's when I went to Ukraine the first time. In
(02:37):
Who Sent You There? I was freelancing, so I had
just lost a job and I used my redundancy payout
to fund my work in Ukraine that first time, and
maybe naively. I contacted the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense and
they told me that even freelance media could embed with
(02:58):
the military so long as I leaded some forms and
had body armor and everything. So yeah, in about I
went to Ukraine for the first time with my gear
and the cash REMI redundancy pay out and just figured
out how to do journalism. And ever since then, that
was kind of the catalyst for why I returned, because
(03:21):
the relationships that I had made with people there from
my first experiences in many ways stuck with me and
they're still the same people. I'm still in touch with
a lot of the people I met during that in
bed and they've all helped me with my work as
it has continued. So I'm assuming that that you had
no formal training in terms of photojournalism or journalism from
(03:43):
my radio and it is he's shaking his head no,
with a sly smile in his face. So no formal
training in photojournalism, the answer is no, correct. Yeah, even
education wise, my background was in writing, and professionally I
was working in different creative services agencies. Like I had
all these fundamental little skills that were a bigger part
(04:05):
of doing multimedia production work, but no formal training in
journalism or anything related to that. So the embedded was
your first real assignment of something that's would be a
precursor of the work you've been doing, and you're there,
what was going on in that you were chronicling. So
(04:26):
the assignment that I had sent myself on that was
my first practical experience doing journalism, and it was very
much a thing of lean in the field because the
place where I was sent was a small town very
close to the Donetsk airport, which is just on the
fringe of one of the occupied capital cities in the east,
(04:50):
where there is now a major escalation seemingly imminent. I
just say that because after the Russian military's goals Kiev
region and throughout Ukraine have evolved a little bit. They're
now focusing on the eastern part of Ukraine and they're
talking about that being the primary objective. So it seems
(05:11):
to me very likely that there will be a major
escalation of the war in that area, specifically, not just
in Kiev and western Ukraine. And so back then a
war has been going on in Ukraine for eight years.
The Russian military annexed Crimea and then was directly involved
(05:32):
in in essentially fomenting a separatist uprising in some parts
of the country. Small groups of people that wanted to
break away from Ukraine, very small groups of people, received
military support, funding as well as espionage level stuff from
(05:54):
the Russian military and government, and they broke off two
parts of eastern Ukraine called the Donetsk People's Republic and
the Luhansk People's Republic. Those territories actually occupied a lot
of eastern Ukraine, and then from the Ukrainian military and
a lot of those were volunteers, pushed the so called
(06:18):
People's Republic's military forces very close to the border with Russia,
and then the Russian military launched an incursion, sent their
military over the border from Russia into Ukraine to fight
the Ukrainian military. Since then, a number of somewhat effective
ceasefires have been implemented called the Mintsk Agreements, and those
(06:42):
Minsk agreements largely froze the front line and conflict in
place where it was before this current invasion started. So
when I went there in for the first time, there
were still significant fighting every day. So the Russia said
them doing little out of town tryouts. If you would
(07:04):
have been doing a lot of little rehearsals for this
big invasion for quite a while now, correct. Yeah, it's
a really great way to put it. And I think
the thing that separates now versus previously the Russian military,
for example, when they shot down Flight MH seventeen, there
was a whole bunch of shadow play and trickery around.
(07:26):
You know, it wasn't us, it was people that had
our hardware. We're not actually in the dom bus. It's
people that found our tanks. There was this joke that
they were miners and they found all this equipment stored underground.
There was all this proof that heavily implicated the Russian
military as having been in the east of Ukraine, but
they wouldn't really play into the uncertainty of it all.
(07:48):
And it was almost a proxy war where the Russian
military was directly involved in on the ground, but they
hid behind the idea that it was separatists doing this,
the rebels. Yes, and they blamed it on separatists and
your rebels in Dulansk and Donetsk, correct, because you were
there for both of those, correct incursions, and and so,
(08:09):
but there were no direct Soviet troops on the ground,
tanks and weaponry or were there there were so Russian
military hardware and soldiers were present at some of the
largest battles in the bus in the early days of
the war, and because the Ukrainian military counter offensive to
(08:33):
recapture the occupied territories was so effective, the so called
separatist forces were pushed very close to the Russian border,
and that's when the Russian military started launching artillery strikes
from across the Russian border into Ukraine. They sent their
military forces in to fight the Ukrainian military actively, and
(08:54):
the battles where the Russian military participated then was some
of the most bloody in the history of the war
at that point. And in one battle, for example, called
illa Weis, a large percentage of the Ukrainian armed forces
were encircled and during a breakout humanitarian corridor which was
offered by the Russian military, a large convoy of Ukrainian
(09:17):
military personnel left and then the Russian military bombarded that
convoy with artillery and indirect fire and it killed potentially
up to a thousand people. During these don Bass battles
that you covered in six seven years ago were atrocities
playing then when you hear reports about what's going on
(09:38):
in Ukraine now? Does it match what you saw years ago?
I mean as a matter of what level, because I
saw atrocious things I saw still it's very surreal to
me because the scenes and events I'm seeing now did
take place seven years ago. I saw destroyed neighborhoods, maimed bodies,
(10:00):
missing legs, civilians, homes are destroyed, civilians killed by the war.
I saw mass graves, not on the same scale, but
graves where the local separatist forces in that area had
just dumped people. Civilians from the nearby area dumped their
own dead personnel when they left. A lot of the
(10:21):
events that we're seeing now did take place then, It's
just the scale now, I think, because of that same
reason that the Russian forces were not their quote unquote,
there was a lot more subterfuge, whereas now that it's
all out in the open and not in the shadows,
everything has been ramped up and scaled up significantly. So therefore,
(10:42):
I'm assuming you you weren't surprised at all when things
took the turn they took this year. It was heading
in that direction, correct. I felt like in the days
before the invasion was announced, I was already out in
the don Bus reporting on infrastructure damage in don Bus,
which had been a big focus of my word, And
I was given information from contacts within the security services
(11:06):
setting very clear dates when they expected that the invasion
would take place, and I will say that they were
very accurate. The dates that they provided turned out to
be correct retroactively, and the invasion was actually moved by
the Russian military and government, and the dates I was
given are initially were spot on accurate. And then I
(11:30):
have friends that were serving in the military and they
were telling me to We're being told we can't leave
the base. We're being told that we should prepare that
the invasion is likely to start tomorrow. So a couple
of days out I knew pretty definitively that it was happening.
But weeks beforehand, I was there to report on the
escalation that was already taken place, because in the days
(11:53):
and weeks leading up to the invasion, there was fighting
in the Dumbus like I'd never experienced before, the severity
of artillery, the damage to homes, cease, five violations, civilians
being killed, like it all objectively increased exponentially in the
like two weeks before the war started. When you show
(12:13):
up there to don Buss again a few years later,
that you know the lay of the land obviously, you
know the territory, you know where to go to be
safe for their place, like where does Bryce Wilson sleep?
Who's paying the bill? When you go on these freelance projects,
you have to fund this yourself. We did somebody pay
for it. I had some offers to help with funding,
(12:36):
but I didn't align with the organization's ethically. They were
sort of towing almost this pro Russian media viewpoint, which
was very concerning for me. But for all intents and purposes,
all of my work since I started has been funded
by myself. This was the first time that I've had
any moderate commercial success for my work, But making money
(12:58):
from doing it had never been a big priority to me.
Like again, maybe naively, I thought there was like a
paragon sort of value in journalism and the value of
it to society, and that was the main motivator for me.
So if I'm doing an assignment in somewhere like don Bus,
(13:18):
I would stay in a city or a town very
close to the front line, and then each day we
would drive out to the areas where we needed to
go to do reporting. But even thirty or forty kilometers
away from the front line, life is relatively normal. In
the evenings, I would go to a bar with some
of my colleagues and we would eat a pizza for
(13:40):
dinner and maybe have a beer or something like this.
Like it's very surreal because in Key of for example,
before the current invasion, people would live very normally and
you could almost fault them for that, like forgetting there
was a war seven hundred kilometers away. But people even
thirty kilometers away from the front line would forget there
(14:02):
was a war at times, and that was very strange.
Why do you think that is a sense something peculiar
to them? I mean, even in the United States, someone
said to me that nine eleven will eventually take its
place alongside Pearl Harbor. It will become a very distant
memory and Americans will forget this almost inconceivable event that
(14:24):
happened here in New York and two one. But there's
nothing peculiar to the Ukrainian nature that makes them want
to carry on with life as they live it. Where
is there some where is there something unique about them
you've found? I mean, there are lots of things that
are unique about Ukrainian people. One example I can give
I was working in a village which had just been
(14:47):
struck by artillery. A person's home was completely destroyed, their
neighbors homes were destroyed. They were quite literally pulling the
bodies of their neighbors out of homes around them. And
I with my colleagues we hadn't eaten that day, and
they just made us food in the destroyed ruins of
(15:07):
their homes while they themselves were struggling. I've never experienced
hospitality on that level before, and I don't know if
anyone would help people in that instance, but we were
just strange people, media personalities. There was me and two
people who just came to them and they fed us
out of the kindness of their own hearts. And I
(15:29):
think that, to me was probably one of the most
unique experiences I had during my assignment. I don't know
how people live so close to the front line and
kind of forget about the war, but I think it
is because primarily the war had been going on for
eight years at this point. It's part of the everyday
fabric of life in some areas. Almost esthetically too, there's
(15:50):
a whole culture around the conflict in Eastern Ukraine lives
people go from checkpoints from one side of the contact
line to the other every day. Like there's whole micro
society and culture and experience of life solely because of
the war that had been going on for eight years
at that point. I also think that where you have
(16:12):
extended conflicts like Vietnam and so forth, that people decide,
this is my opinion, they make a decision to carry
on with life as they know it because you know
it could be over tomorrow. You know, you can live
in fear, or you can try to normalize things to
the best of your ability and try to you know,
raise your children and grow your food or obviously I'm
(16:33):
talking about Southeast Asia now. But one thing I'm wondering,
what would you say is your understanding of what percentage
what fraction is it a significant fraction of people who
want to reunify with Russia. What percentage of the Ukrainian
people are Russian sympathizers from your experience. In my experience,
even in the East, I met very few people that
(16:56):
truly wanted that unification. There's a lot of information around
why the separatist republics exist, What are their motivators, what
is the true support numbers? And to the best of
my knowledge, even earlier in the war, like in the
days before the separatists sort of uprisings happened, it was
single percentage figures and low single percentage figures. And as
(17:18):
time has gone on the eastern areas there's been a
mass exodus of people into government controlled territories. And now
I believe that a significant percentage of people that have
received Russian passports and there's a whole I guess, absorption
of that region into Russia effectively. But in my experience
(17:40):
from west to east of the country, north to south,
like pre and during the war, I never met anybody
that truly supported this sentiment that like we in Ukraine
want to be a part of Russia. It's not to
say that they don't exist. I talked with people that
had more pro Russian ideologies, but I never met someone
our right, Is it just about tradition? What is it
(18:03):
about Russia let alone? What is it about Putin that
they want to align themselves with that government in that country?
I think yes. So many people in those areas might
have had memories of when the Soviet Union was a
bigger part of their lives and economically, especially in the
dom bast During the height of the USSR and the
(18:25):
history of the Soviet Empire, the Dombas was a major
economical center. It's where a lot of the mining infrastructure is.
There was a lot of science and metallurgical studies and
stuff that took place out there. People in those areas
lived pretty good lives at the height of the USSR.
Some people I talked to were or One of the
(18:47):
guys was a driver that I worked with. He was
a former marine in the Russian military. He deployed to Afghanistan.
His memories and experiences of life are completely different than
someone is living on their pench and struggling. I met
another person who lived in Donetsk during sort of more
economically affluent times, and they shared similar things, like all
(19:10):
they knew was under Ukrainian control, that the area had
fallen into disrepair and things like this, and they, I
guess associated that their lives were better when Russia was
in control of that area. When you started out and
you had to teach yourself the business of photojournalism, especially
an a war torn country, what was some of the
(19:30):
most important things you had to learn upfront, And what
do you wish you knew? What do you wish you
do knew then that you know now? What have you
learned about the job? I wish when I started I
had better language skills, because for the first couple of
times I went there, I didn't speak any local languages,
and when I would come back home, I was taking
(19:52):
Russian language classes and practicing through the internet and everything too.
And I wish I'd have started that process sooner, because
even an extra year, an extra eighteen months of practice
probably would have been hugely beneficial to my work and skills.
And I think to one thing I realized is doing
this sort of work like it does have a toll.
(20:14):
It takes a toll on you. And for me, it's
this realization when you witness life and these events, that
it changes your whole perception of even your reality back home.
And that's what you can't undo. For me, at least
filters or affects the filter or the lens through which
you see your life. And after I went there and
(20:37):
have worked there, changed a lot of the things that
I think about life, philosophically, practically, professionally, socially like it.
It made me a much different person. Now you do
some of your reporting, or you post some of your
stuff on social media. Correct, that's correct. I'd used Twitter
(20:59):
primarily for my work, and then during the early days
of the invasion I was live streaming updates to people
on Instagram. How has that changed the way you work?
I mean, having that immediacy and posting your own stuff.
Do you find that beneficial? When the invasion started in
the city I was in. Within seconds or minutes of
(21:20):
putt into Claring war, they were already dropping bombs very
close to my house, and I recognized that the war
had started, and I put my body armor on and
started live streaming. So from literally the earliest minutes of
the war, I was live streaming to tens of thousands
of people on Instagram, and that in and of itself
(21:42):
is such a fundamental change to the way that people
consume news and media. Like I didn't need to go
on television to inform and share news with people. I
was literally from the palm of my hand, from my iPhone,
streaming to people all around the world. And at one moment,
Russian cruise missile flew no more than fifty meters above
(22:05):
my head and I was live streaming that and showing
people that in real time, and then that clip went viral,
as people say, and it was almost like a defining
moment of the first day of the invasion, like the
footage of that event. But I went from being someone
who was very fundamentally antisocial media, like I used it
(22:26):
as little as possible, two a large percentage of my
work being attributed to social media. So it's been for
me a very It's like a contradiction in terms of
how I want to conduct myself. But social media and
the new Internet and new media has changed my life
in a big way. Photojournalist Bryce Wilson. If you'd like
(22:50):
more insight into the history of the Russia Ukraine crisis,
check out my interview with New York Times correspondent and
Putin biographer Stephen Lee Meyer. His book, The News Are
The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin chronicles the ascent
of the Russian president. Putin only one of the vote,
(23:10):
and you know, it wasn't a slam dunk. And since
then Putin made sure that the ways the elections are managed, um,
there's no uncertainty in the voting. He stripped them of
the competitive uncertainty that makes them truly democratic, either in
terms of who can run and then the actual voting itself,
because transitions in Russia have never gone well. Even during
(23:31):
the Empire, it was always tumultuous. Here more of my
conversation with author Stephen Lee Myers that Here's the Thing
dot org. After the break, Bryce Wilson tells us why
the Ukrainian forces are some of the best and most
experienced in the world. I'm Alec Baldwin and you were
(24:03):
listening to Here's the Thing. Photo journalist Bryce Wilson spent
the last few months in Ukraine reporting on the Russian invasion.
His breath taking first person live streams show the world
what it feels like to be on the front lines.
I wanted to know if the balance of power is
affected by the Ukrainian forces preparedness or the Russian forces
(24:26):
lack thereof. It's definitely both. The Russian military is critically
underperforming in every facet, logistically, war fighting, the equipment itself, maintenance.
There are so many facets as to why the Russian
military performance has been what it is. But the Ukrainian
armed forces too in the dumbas tens of thousands hundreds
(24:51):
of thousands of Ukrainian military personnel have done deployment in
the active war zone. The Armed Forces of Ukraine, in
my opinion, are probably the most contemporarily experienced military in
the world. They are trained extensively over the last eight years.
They're motivated to defend their homes. They're equipped like there
(25:12):
are so many variables that go into why they've been
so effective. But I do believe that people overestimated the
Russian military capabilities and underestimated the Ukrainian military's capabilities. Did
the citizens of Ukraine. Were they surprised that the Russians
invader They weren't surprised. I think people were absolutely surprised
(25:33):
that people I speak to from the east to the west.
Even leading up to the invasion, people were still convinced
it's not going to happen. It's you know, this is
just fear mongering. And I think in many ways people
were conditioned because of the eight years of war. They
didn't understand how to view the threat objectively or in context.
Even when the invasion came on the morning there were
(25:55):
bombs falling in the city and Chromatosk, where I was,
and I was talking to people who were casually going
to work. Still they were saying, like, well, I've got
to go to my job, like I have a duty.
I won't stop working until like I'm told to. Essentially, So,
I think up until the very the last moment, people
were convinced that wasn't going to happen. And even when
(26:16):
the war did happen, people were still leaving evacuation essentially
until there were bombs landing at the end of their street. Like,
I don't think anybody took the threat or the risks seriously,
and I don't know why. As I described the war
and dumbus, it was a shadow play that was subterfusion trickery.
The Russian military is there, but they're not saying they're there.
(26:39):
There's a huge difference between a proxy war like that
and an active, full scale, multifront invasion of an independent nation.
But even myself, professionally and personally, I couldn't imagine that
it was going to happen. Just the scale of something
like that is so history changing. To send tens of
(27:01):
thousands of guys rolling across the border with tanks and
planes and fighter jets, bombers, naval support, just the whole
thing that just the scale I think boggles the mind.
But what do you think the Russians want? Do they
want to just destroy things? Is putting someone who just
wants to have a military conquest and then leave and
(27:24):
there's no political aftermath. What's his goal? What does he want? Well, me, personally,
I just see this as a continuation of Russian hostilities
towards Ukraine and the concept of Ukrainian independence. This has
been perpetuated for centuries historically the occupying power in the
(27:45):
area of Russia. They have forcefully starved millions of people.
During the whole Lotimore, there were political persecutions against people
in Ukraine. The Ukrainian language was essentially forbidden. This to me,
one element of it is just a continuation of this
anti Ukrainian sentiment in the context of them existing as
(28:05):
an independent state, because even in recent days there have
been comments from Russian political leaders where they have essentially said,
we think it's even offensive that the idea of Ukraine
even exists, like it's just another part of Russia. So
I think the military goal in the early days really
was to capture Kiev, and I think that the Russian
(28:28):
military and their analysts expected that the Ukrainian military and
government would just capitulate very quickly and turnover. That hasn't
happened now and now I think the goal is to
show through capturing the east and the south of the
country that it wasn't in vain. Essentially, the Russian military
could level the whole country, and in some places I
(28:49):
went to whole villages and cities are just destroyed by
bombing and people volunteers. I would go there and help
reconstruct this place. It's a country I love, My friends
are there. I would be involved. I'm sure tens of
thousands of people from around the world will go and help. Yes,
yes they will. Ultimately, this is just an attempt to
(29:11):
intimidate the concept of Ukraine being an independent nation. And
whatever their objectives were, if it was to force the
capitulation of the country, I don't think it will happen.
Based on the current trend. How do you think this
is going to end? I'm not sure. My my gut
feeling around how the conflict would continue or end was
(29:32):
always that there would be a major escalation of fighting
in the East because it's territory that Russia had previously
attempted to take, whether directly or indirectly. I believe that
the war fighting there could potentially continue for years, as
it already has. I don't expect that Kiev will be occupied.
I don't expect that the majority of Ukraine will be occupied,
(29:55):
but I think areas where the Russian border in Ukrainian
border exists, there will be ongoing fighting for months potentially,
And I think really it's a matter of time before
the sanctions and also economic situation in Russia begins to
become a bit of a problem. But I don't expect
that the Ukrainian military or its people will lose their
(30:17):
will to continue fighting. And when stuff like the mosque
for being sunk happens, it's a huge morale boost for people.
So I think it's just a matter of time before
there are concessions and maybe the peace talks continue. But
I do suspect that fighting in the East will continue
for months or years. Do you think that having any
(30:38):
effect on the Russians. I'm not really sure the machinations
of it all. I just know on the ground, because
I have people in my close personal life who have
relationships with people in Russia, that it's making a difference.
This is affecting the way people live their lives, and
I would assume, maybe naively, that when the average persons
(30:59):
lie starts being affected, that's when they actually get involved
with sort of pushing for change. Now, of course, one
of the quickest ways you can engender supporting the American people.
They talk about war crimes and talk about you know,
gases and so forth. Either you under are you under
the impression that the Russians are actually committing war crimes
over there? Yes, it's my opinion based on things that
(31:21):
I saw, witnessed read, have had reported to me that
the Russian military is conducting war crimes in those areas.
I saw people who were executed while they were bound.
I've had reports independently verified to me by multiple organizations
of just agrees your sexual assault, often on some children.
(31:44):
I've also heard reports that people are being forcibly taken
and sexually assaulted. And I did read a report that
someone had been taken from one of the previously occupied
parts of Kiev and then dumped at the border after
they've basically been raped by the military. Looting has been
taken place, and there was a story of a Russian
(32:05):
soldier stealing a MacBook and he took the armor plate
out of his vest and put the MacBook in there
to hide it, and he ended up being shot, and
the MacBook is actually why he was killed. If he
was wearing his armor, he probably would have survived the bullet.
So there's like mass war crimes going on in the
previously occupied areas, and I hate to think what's happening
(32:28):
in places where there's not so much media coverage, because
the mass influx of journalists into those previously occupied areas
is why they discovered so many atrocities. What's your evaluation
of Zelenski and what do you see in country? What
do people there? Does he enjoy the reputation that he
has here in the United States, and how do people
(32:49):
feel about him over there. I was at Zelenski's inauguration
many years ago, and it's very surreal for me to
have seen this huge narrative of his director quite literally
a character, because he has an acting background and he's
a very interesting person. But he, in my opinion, will
(33:10):
be remembered in the same vein as famous Ukrainian poets,
people who were invested in the idea of Ukraine's independence,
like Zelensky, in my opinion, is a hero through his leadership,
and if Ukraine falls, it means his family are affected
to it means he's at risk. He was at risk
of being assassinated many times. He's not running away, he's
(33:33):
not leaving. He's doing what I think many Ukrainian people
identify with, and that's sticking up for his country. And
I think that's why many Ukrainians are very proud of him,
and it shows that the people stand with him and
they identify with what he is doing. Are you going
to go back, Yes, I'm sure that my work in
(33:53):
Ukraine will continue indefinitely. Like my goal, I don't want
to be a war journalists specific clear, my work and
interest is Ukraine. The experiences I've had there and the
things I've learned have changed me a lot, and I
really appreciate even when I have opportunities like this to
share with people, because I think, as you said, this
(34:13):
war brought a lot of attention to Ukraine, but things
have been going on there for eight years and twenty
years before that and thirty years before that, and I
think it's such a diverse and rich part of the
world and rich region, and I'm still discovering things and
I hope I'll be able to continue sharing that with people. Well, listen,
thank you for your time. I really appreciate it. I'm
(34:35):
really grateful for the opportunity. Thank you photo journalist Bryce Wilson.
If you're enjoying this conversation, don't keep it to yourself,
Tell a friend and follow here's the thing on the
I Heart radio app, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
When we come back, i'd A Sawyer of Human Rights
(34:57):
Watch discusses the documentation of Russia's human rights abuses in Ukraine.
I'm Alec Baldwin and this is here's the thing. When
(35:19):
the recent atrocities in Bucha were reported, it became clear
that these events were violations of the international humanitarian law
and the Geneva Conventions. Ida Sawyer is the director of
the Crisis and Conflict Division for Human Rights Watch. Sawyer
spent eight years on the ground in the Democratic Republic
(35:39):
of Congo covering human rights abuses and supervised teams in
Syria and Yemen. Ida Sawyer told me about the primary
objective of her organization. Human Rights Watch where an international
non governmental human rights organization. So we work in over
ninety countries around the world, and we document human rights abuses,
(36:03):
so that's attacks on civilians, laws of war violations during
armed conflicts, women's rights violations, children's rights, refugees rights issues,
and we go out we collect the facts. We have
over five hundred staff working around the world. We speak
to victims and witnesses and others, try to figure out
(36:24):
what happened, and then we publish our findings in reports
and other documents, videos, and then we push for for justice,
so we push for those most responsible for the abuses
to be held to account, and then we also push
for policy changes to to end the abuses that we've documented.
What do areas of the world that have chronic human
(36:47):
rights issues? What do those areas of the world. Is
there something that they have in common? Is it a
lockdown on the media and dictatorial control of the country.
Do you find human rights abuses flourish in places like
that more readily? Yes, definitely. I mean there are they're
different kinds of chronic human rights abuses in different regions,
(37:07):
but I think in in countries where you have more
authoritarian governments, where you don't have freedom of expression, freedom
of the press, and there's crackdowns on political opposition, leaders,
journalist activists. That's where we see some of the worst abuses,
and that can sometimes be related to abuses linked to
(37:28):
access to healthcare, education, and those sorts of human rights
as well. For most people, when the conflict between Ukraine
and Russia, when Putin and Zelinski look like they're going
to go to another level. You know, many Americans, and
this is very common in America, they sit there like, yeah,
(37:50):
what's Russia's beef with the Ukraine? You know, I mean, like,
what's there? It's all new information for them, and so
for you, did you know this was coming? Yeah, I
mean we were definitely watching it closely. In our Ukraine
team we have we have a researcher working full time
on Ukraine and our broader Europe and Central Asia team
have been working on on the conflict in Ukraine since
(38:11):
two thousand fourteen. And since I've started being focusing so
closely on this, every Ukrainian you talked to reminds, you know,
the war didn't start in February. This has been going on,
So it's definitely something that we were aware of. And
then by late last year earlier this year, it seemed
more and more likely that it would really escalate. You're
(38:33):
hearing some pretty ugly horrible stories about abuses there and
that Putin and the Russians are war criminals and they're
doing all kinds of horrible things. Your organization, you have
people on the ground there in Ukrainei ass m. Yes,
we don't, and the report to you that they see
this themselves, they have first hand knowledge of these things themselves. Correct. Yes, yes,
(38:57):
So that's what our teams are doing, and that's really
trying to understand the context for the violations that are reported. So,
for example, there's been so much attention on Bucha. So
that's the area just north of Kiev that the Russian
forces retreated from and that's allowed Ukrainian authorities to retake control.
Journalists and others now have access, and we're seeing just
(39:21):
horrific images of the trail of violence that the Russian
forces left behind, Bodies strewn along the streets, reports of
mass graves and and just all of this violence and destruction.
But what our team there is doing is trying to
understand Okay, yes many people died, but how did they
die and what were the circumstances and does this amount
(39:43):
to war crimes? How did they die? And what were
the circumstances. So our team is they're documenting now and
it's it's clear that the Russian forces occupied this area
from around March fourth until March thirty one, and there
wasn't one single massacre, but there were a series of
many different incidents, lots of summary executions as well as
(40:07):
other cases of targeted killings and indiscriminate attacks on civilians.
So what we've seen is Russian forces going door to door,
interrogating the men and then sometimes dragging them out and
either shooting them on their yard in front of their house,
or in some cases taking them to a detention center
that they had set up, and then later their families
(40:28):
would find that they've been killed, sometimes with a bullet
to the head, and their bodies lying on the street
or behind different buildings. We've also seen just indiscriminate attacks,
sometimes if people who were sheltering in their basements came
out to look for food, or in one case a
man went out on his balcony to smoke a cigarette
(40:49):
and he was shot in the neck. So that's sort
of just violence at indiscriminate violence against civilians. And then
when when you say indiscriminate I mean, I appreciate that
much of it is indiscriminate or also in addition, are
there some instances where the Russians have sympathizers there or
they have people who out of fear, are providing them
(41:09):
with information and saying ten seventeen Main Street, down the
block there, ten seventeen leon Ede bregion of boulevard, head
down there, and that guy is part of a cell,
and that guy is part of the troublemakers. Are a
lot of people getting ratted out there, So there are
a lot of people capitulating and helping the Russians to
(41:30):
identify these people to send shock ways of terror throughout
the communities that they're in. So what we've seen in Buscha,
it's not clear that they're targeting any members of particular selves.
What they say is that they're quote hunting Nazis and
they're definitely looking for weapons in people's houses and anyone
(41:52):
with potential connections to the territorial defense forces. But many
of the cases that we've documented it doesn't appear that
the individuals who were who were targeted had any links
to military groups or or otherwise. But we have heard
cases in other areas that the Russian forces have occupied
of specific targeted attacks against, for example, journalists and activists
(42:15):
and others who they might deem to be a particular
threat to them. So when you go there, what possible
hope do you have of changing the situation in a
place with someone who is as unilateral as Putin is?
I mean Putin is rolling those I mean the Russian
army is a kick ass army. They got it all.
They got all the bombs and planes, that's whether that's
(42:36):
what they spend their money on. They don't feed their people,
they don't take care of their people. What hope do
you have of possibly negotiating with Putin? How do you
feel about that? Do you think there's any hope that
this is going to end? I think there is hope,
And I think that what we've seen in other in
other cases is that it can often take time, but
that if there is enough pressure and if the documentation
(43:00):
is there, you can see people being brought to justice.
And I think something that's really surprised me, and I've
never experienced this and other conflicts that I've worked on,
is just how quickly the international community mobilized and the
International Criminal Board launched an investigation right away. The United
Nations Human Rights Council launched a commission of inquiry. There's
(43:22):
been all of this pressure and and Prudent hasn't felt
to this pressure before, so it might take time, but
I think that there is a possibility that we could
see see justice, but we have to keep pushing forward.
And I think it's important also to remember that the
types of crimes that we're seeing and we're documenting in
Ukraine now, they're very similar to crimes that our team
(43:45):
documented in Syria several years ago committed by Russian forces.
Some of these same commanders were involved, and they got
away with it, and they were never held to account,
and that impunity has helped facilitate has allowed to continue
with these same sorts of abuses that we're seeing now
in Ukraine. So I really hope, you know, with all
(44:05):
of this mobilization, that we're seeing, this pressure, these investigations
that have started, that will actually finally see some justice
this time. Do you have any hope that the Russians
will get kicked out of the Security Council. I think
we're a long way from that, but they were just
voted out of the Human Rights Council so I think
(44:25):
that sends an initial important signal that they really have
no place They're given this the horrific crimes that are
being committed now, at the very least in terms of appearances.
I have a lot of faith in the United Nations
and I hope that they do kick them out of
the Security Council. As you said, it's a it's a
long shot, but I think that we need to We
need to have people come to the table who recognize
(44:47):
that war itself is obsolete. That precisely what the Russians
are doing now is obsolete. You can't go in there
and completely level a whole country, rely on Western count
used to come in and clean up the mess. And
I feel like someone's got to be able to negotiate
with them and start a global introduction of an idea
(45:09):
that war itself as a war crime. Forget about there's
things you can't do during war. You can't do war,
you know. I mean, how do we make war itself obsolete? Now? Um,
do you think that sanctions work? I think they can
work here. I think it's also a question of are
(45:29):
they being implemented? So are you are we actually looking
for all of the resources that these individuals have and
making sure they're being seized. There's a question of network sanctions,
so not just the individuals, but those in the companies
that are connected to them but hidden a bit, making
sure they're targeted as well. There's this muscle you developed
(45:51):
very keenly to look at what people do to abuse
political power. Has it effective when you come home as
Human Rights Watch ever brought a case against an American government, Yes, definitely.
So we have our US program is actually our biggest
country program. So we do a lot of work here
in the US. And so I was in New York
(46:13):
before moving back to d C and worked in on
a lot of the police violence and abuse during the
George Floyd protests, and we did we did a big
project on the crackdown in mod Haven and the South
Bronx and just documented how the police, the NYPD kettled
(46:34):
protesters there and then just used complete unprovoked violence, beating up,
cracking down on these protesters um and really worked with
other groups to push for push for some accountability. We
also did work around voting rights during the last elections,
and then we also look at the conduct of US
(46:55):
forces internationally and strikes on civilian target for example, and
pushing for for accountability, reparations and that type of thing.
So we we definitely do work on the US And yes,
definitely big focus. You've dedicated your life to this incredibly
(47:18):
difficult work. You know, it's it's ugly. You learn the
realities of a lot of horrible things that have been
happening to people. What keeps you wanting to do this work? Yeah,
I mean I think it is we do hear a
lot of just really horrible stories about the worst of humanity,
but we also I feel like people want their story
(47:39):
to be told. They want people to know what they
what they experienced, what they suffered. So we do play
an important role in giving giving their stories a voice.
And then it's also when we do have successes, so
when we finally see justice, um and and like it's
it's seeing that that we can make make a difference.
(48:00):
What is victory for Human Rights Watch? What is justice? Yeah?
So I think one of one of the big victories
we had was with Bosco and Tegonda. So he was
a warlord from an armed group backed by neighboring Rwanda,
and we had documented his crimes for over a decade.
Mass large scale massacres, mass rapes, sexual violence, he himself
(48:26):
had raped women who were held under under their control,
recruitment of children, just a lidany of abuses that we documented,
and eventually the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant
for him and he was transferred to the Hague and
put on trial and later convicted for war crimes and
(48:46):
crimes against humanity. So I think he is in prison, Yeah,
in the Hague. He's in prison in the Netherlands, yes,
But what sentence was he given? So thirty years? He
was sentenced to thirty years for war crimes or human
rights abuses in the Hague. This guy, Wow, that's that's
that's amazing. To get a guy like that, who's real,
who a real kingpin, a guy who was a lot
(49:09):
of murder and death and blood on his hands and
has destroyed the lives of countless people. To see that
guy get locked up in prisoner must have been very,
very satisfying. Well, as you're another spot in the world,
is Ida Sawyer headed somewhere? You don't have to say,
But do you have another location you want to go
to next? Well? I am probably heading to Ukraine next week.
(49:30):
So keeping the focus there for yeah, well listen. Thank
you so much for joining us, and if you do
head over there, please be careful. Thank you so much.
My thanks to Ida Sawyer and Bryce Wilson. This episode
(49:50):
was produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach McNeice, and Maureen Hoban.
Our engineer is Frank Imperial. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the
thing is brought to you buy iHeart Radio
Host
Alec Baldwin
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