Month: June 2022

Life underground in bombarded Kharkiv. A ten-year-old Ukrainian girl dreams of ballroom dancing — and of meeting Paddington Bear.

28 June 2022 By Paul Martin

Exclusive. Vika Mats, aged 10, and her mother Liana, 36, are stuck underground again in a Metro station after a terrifying day and night of rocket bombardments from advancing Russian forces in north-east Ukraine.  They had enjoyed a five days of sunlight after Ukrainian troops pushed the Russian forces back toward their border and out of […]

In mid-2022, Ukrainians show a dogged determination to survive the Russian onslaught.

28 June 2022 By Paul Martin

Exclusive.By Paul Cainer in Kyiv It was a strange but almost comical scene. A dog was running towards me across Kyiv’s central landmark, Independence Square.  And trying with some difficulty to restrain the animal, on a long lead, was the dog’s new master, 26-year-old Sviatoslav Yurash, Ukraine’s youngest member of parliament. He had been taken […]

“Ukraine: Life Under Attack” documents painful but life-affirming survival under Russian bombardment in Kharkiv.

27 June 2022 By Paul Martin

It’s been dubbed City of Heroes, the official accolade awarded by President Volodymyr Zelensky to Kharkiv — Ukraine’s battered second city. Two intrepid cameramen-producers have chronicled its trials and tribulations under Russian fire in a riveting film called “Ukraine: Life Under Attack”.  Their documentary has added poignancy as the Russian bombardment, apparently receding a month ago, […]

Brothers in arms. The Klitschko world boxing champions in conversation — as Kyiv, the Ukrainian city run by the older brother, comes under Russian attack again.

26 June 2022 By Paul Martin

First ever exclusive interview with BOTH Klitschkos in a location (“bunker”) we are not disclosing for security reasons. Vitali, the great world champ boxer now mayor of Kyiv, makes a direct appeal to the soldiers fighting Ukraine inside his country: “Go home now.  Why should you die in a foreign land just for the money […]

‘I was expecting someone more important.’ Journalistic encounters with world leaders don’t always go to plan.

21 June 2022 By Paul Martin

As I walked in to a hotel to interview Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s prime minister from 1959 to 1990), I should perhaps have read the signals.  The Singaporean leader looked at me, then at his wrist-watch, in quick succession.  He pointed to a chair I was to sit on. “I was expecting someone, er, more important,” he […]

With prospects of victory looking slim, Ukrainians are waiting – in hope rather than in confidence.

13 June 2022 By Paul Martin

 It was a strange but almost comical scene. A dog was running towards me across Kyiv’s central landmark, Independence Square.  And trying with some difficulty to restrain the animal, on a long lead, was the dog’s new master, 26-year-old Sviatoslav Yurash, Ukraine’s youngest member of parliament. He had been driven from Kyiv to Bucha just […]