It’s hard to listen to voices from the other side of the Ukraine war but I’m glad I did

Russian journalist Katerina Gordeeva’s interviews deserve to be read from Dnipro to Dublin, even if many were hard for this Ukrainian to digest

The funeral of the three civilians killed by a Russian missile attack on Kramatorsk, Ukraine in February this year. Photo: Diego Fedele/Getty Images

Ksenia Samotiy

There are few subjects that are written about more than war, yet so often things are reduced to simple narratives: explosions, deaths, good guys versus bad guys, innocent civilians, women as victims, bedraggled refugees and so on. It’s not only foreign correspondents who do this. We all do, including those who are more directly affected by the war. When you feel under attack, it’s a natural response to see things in black and white.

Yet if you talk to the people who are most affected, their responses are rarely so simple. Their daily lives, their perspectives, their opinions on who is to blame or what should happen — it’s never as clear cut as you expect, and that can be confusing, uncomfortable, even confounding.