Story
June 23, 2022
Heading to Ukraine, a Group of Hong Kong and Taiwanese Journalists Cover the War (Chinese)
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The team explores the road to recovery for war-crime survivors fleeing Russian-occupied areas.
This story excerpt was translated from Chinese. To read the original story in full, visit The Initium.
Three months into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Alicia Chen from Taiwan and Mihir Melwani and Jeremy Ethan from Hong Kong embarked on a journey to Lviv, Western Ukraine, to cover allegations of Russia’s war crimes and the lives of resilient Ukrainians rewritten by the war.
Crossing the border from Poland into Ukraine at Medyka, we saw a banner emblazoned with a word “Jiāyóu,” or “Cheer Up” in Chinese, which represents Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests of 2019. Afterwards, we were welcomed by a long queue of Ukrainian returnees, the number of which, at the time, had already surpassed those who had fled.
As a nonprofit journalism organization, we depend on your support to fund coverage of global conflicts. Help us continue funding the hard costs of in-depth coverage of the Ukraine invasion—including travel, hostile environment safety training, and the increased security expenses that arise from reporting in war zones.
This story, written in the first person, presents the first few days of experience reporting in Ukraine, including our response to the first air siren we heard, and also a sense of normalcy in Lviv during this time.
Our team of reporters hopes to bring different perspectives to our readers, and to learn how Ukraine, on the frontlines of the democratic world, copes with the Russian invasion.
