Irish Examiner view: Brave journalists documenting the horrors of war

Reporting on conflict in Ukraine is more dangerous than any and puts the bravery of journalists there into clear context

Ukrainian emergency employees and volunteers carry an injured pregnant woman from the maternity hospital that was damaged by shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, last week. Picture: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP

The image of a heavily pregnant woman being stretchered from the remnants of a maternity hospital in Mariupol by Associated Press photographer Evgeiny Maloletka gave the outside world a tiny glimpse of the horror being rained down on innocent Ukrainian people by Vladimir Putin’s invading Russian army.

That woman and her child died, doctors unable to save them from the injuries incurred in a barbaric attack on an undefended civilian target. Maloletka’s picture, however, had told the world a vivid story.

On Saturday, the American documentary maker Brent Renaud was shot in the head by a suspected Russian army sniper in the city of Irpin near Kyiv and died immediately. 

Like Maloletka, Renaud put his life on the line to bring the truth of the war in Ukraine to the world at large. 

He paid the ultimate price for that truth. Maloletka is still in the firing line.

Stuart Ramsey, Sky News’ chief correspondent, and camera operator, Richie Mockler, were last week shot at by a so-called Russian army ‘death squad’ in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha as they tried to inform the world about the reality of what’s going on in this grim war. 

They survived, but they were very lucky.

International media, used to working in global trouble spots, have rarely if ever been in as much peril doing their jobs as they currently face in Ukraine, simply because the aggressors have little interest in the truth of what they’re doing being broadcast to the world. 

That makes reporting on this conflict more dangerous than any and puts the bravery of journalists in Ukraine into clear context.

The all-too-vivid awfulness of what’s going on in this war is being illustrated to the world by these incredibly brave people. 

Imagine what other horrors might be perpetrated on the people of Ukraine if they were not there.