Ukrainian war reporter Andriy Tsaplienko hasn’t taken a day off since Russia invaded his home country. He sleeps around four hours a night and was wounded by shrapnel, yet has no plans of stopping his work.
The war is personal to him and he makes no efforts to deny it. Tsaplienko views what he does as part of the fight for Ukraine.
“It’s a calling. It’s an obligation. It’s a dream job,” he said. “If you can help your army to win, if you can help your people to survive, you can be proud of your job. That’s it. That’s what I’m trying to do.”
Tsaplienko’s history with Russia
Tsaplienko grew up as a citizen of the USSR and even did national service with the Soviet military in the late 1980s.
But at home in Kharkiv, which is now part of northeast Ukraine, he grew up listening to American rock music and worshiping American democracy. In 1990, Tsaplienko posted leaflets with his friends calling for Ukrainian independence from Moscow.
“It was a kind of real rebellion”, he said, expecting the KGB to appear at his door. “But fortunately there were no consequences at all.”
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A year later, the Soviet Union collapsed and Tsaplienko felt he’d been set free.
In the new, independent and democratic Ukraine, Tsaplienko became an international war reporter — one of Ukraine’s first. Starting in the 1990s, he broadcast from Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza and West Africa, initially for the Ukrainian TV channel Inter. He learned how easy wars are to start, and how difficult they are to stop.
War comes to Ukraine
CBS News senior foreign correspondent and 60 Minutes contributor Holly Williams spoke with
Tsaplienko in February of 2022, 10 days before Vladimir Putin launched his unprovoked invasion. At the time, over a hundred thousand Russian troops were massed along Ukraine’s border.
“Ukrainians have already made their choice between war and dishonor,” Tsaplienko said at the time. “Every window in this town will shoot at the invaders.”
He turned out to be right.
“We will live or we will die. That’s it,” he said. “I know my people. And they are like this.”
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Tsaplienko came close to losing his life during the war. He was outside the town of Chernihiv in northern Ukraine in 2022 as civilians fled through a narrow humanitarian corridor. Russians began shelling and Tsaplienko took a shrapnel wound to his leg.
He feels there’s danger and risks no matter where he’s reporting from.
“We are sitting in the studio. Do we think we are safe now? No,” he said. “There is no safe place in Ukraine.”
Danger in Tsaplienko’s hometown
In his hometown, Kharkiv, residents are under near daily bombardment by Russian missiles, drones and glide bombs – Soviet-era munitions outfitted with wings and satellite navigation. More than a quarter of Kharkiv’s residents have fled, but for those who’ve stayed, civic pride is non-negotiable.
Tsaplienko’s mother is among those who stayed. Valentina, a retired shopkeeper, lives on the outskirts of town, in a district that’s frequently bombed.
“She says that Russians will never come here, never. ‘We will not let them in, never,’” Tsaplienko said.
Like around a third of Ukrainians, Tsaplienko and his mother speak Russian as their first language. Kharkiv is a majority Russian-speaking city.
Putin has said that the Ukrainian nation doesn’t actually exist, that Ukrainians are really Russians. Putin’s said that the war is to defend people like Tsaplienko
“Protect from what? This is standard propaganda cliché,” Tsaplienko said. “They want to kill us.”
Putin’s invasion has cost the lives of over 100,000 Russian soldiers, according to U.S. officials. Ukraine’s military death toll alone is now thought to be more than 70,000. Tsaplienko said the freedoms Ukraine only recently began to enjoy are what these soldiers died for – and the reason he keeps going back to the frontline.
How Tsaplienko is reporting on the war
Tsaplienko is as fearless a journalist as they come. Some of Ukraine’s military leaders say they’re surprised he’s still alive.
Battle scarred and limping, he joined the 80th Air Assault Brigade last month in a forest close to Russia’s border. He likes to be in the middle of the story.
“[My channel,] they always want me to be in the studio as an anchor, as a host. I always refuse to be like that, because I’m a field journalist,” he said. “I feel myself in the studio like a doll in a box.”
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Tsaplienko’s graphic accounts from the field, for the privately owned channel 1+1, have shaped how many Ukrainians see the war. He’s told stories of heroism, but he’s also turned a critical eye on his own country, especially Ukrainian corruption. Tsaplienko revealed how some Ukrainians were paying bribes to government officials to avoid the draft.
His contacts inside Ukraine’s armed forces are more than just sources. Gen. Serhiy Deineko — the commander of Ukraine’s state border guard — is a decorated war hero, and one of Tsaplienko’s closest friends.
“The audience that Andriy reaches, we’re talking about millions of people,” Deineko said through a translator. “He is really respected – both on the front line, and by Ukrainian society.”
Free media’s role in the war
Tsaplienko said he’s fighting for Ukraine’s survival, using his reporting, and the truth, as his weapons.
“Free media system helps us to win this war and will help us to win this war,” he said. “Because we fight not for the government. We fight not for a particular person, like Russians do. They fight for Putin.”
Ukrainians, he said, are fighting for themselves and their identity.
“We fight for our country and for values because we want this country to be free. That’s it,” he said.
The truth, according to Tsaplienko, is that Ukraine is doing battle against evil.
He personally raised around $2 million for Ukraine’s military and doesn’t feel he’s unique in taking a side.
“I think every Ukrainian journalist took his side in this war,” he said.
Tsaplienko said Russia forces will kill any Ukrainian journalist they capture.
“Normally, before this war…you have to give two points of view to the viewers to help them to decide what’s right, what’s wrong. But it’s not like this in this war,” he said. “We still have corruption problems. That’s true. We still have problems in bad managing. That’s true. But we are on a good side of history. That’s it. We protect values.”
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