So, obviously, my immediate question was, can we go? can we get there? setting it up with the ukrainians was not the hard bit. Actually, it was convincing my editors and, you know, layers of management back at the times that this was a safe thing to do, or that we could mitigate the risks involved in it. Because they weren t just about the danger there. They were also these legal risks about. . . . . The legal consequences of illegally crossing into russia, which is how the russian government have perceived the trip. But you obviously persuaded them, cos you went. Just to explain, then, who you did speak to and what the terms were. I suppose the question is, whether you were changing names to protect russians, because getting people, presumably, in russia to speak candidly to western journalists must be very hard? well, yeah, these are people who lived in a very quiet corner of russia, and probably had never had anything to do with a journalist, even a russian journalist, never mind a
Catherine philp is world affairs editor at the times. She s reported from war zones for decades, and recently accompanied ukrainian forces across the border into kursk. So, i was coming into ukraine for. . . I ve been coming on and off since before the invasion, and this was a long scheduled visit. Itjust so happened that it came at a time when ukrainian forces had crossed the border into russia. So, obviously, my immediate question was, can we go? can we get there? setting it up with the ukrainians was not the hard bit. Actually, it was convincing my editors and, you know, layers of management back at the times that this was a safe thing to do, or that we could mitigate the risks involved in it. Because they weren t just about the danger there. They were also these legal risks about. . . . . The legal consequences of illegally crossing into russia, which is how the russian government have perceived the trip. But you obviously persuaded them, cos you went. Just to explain, then, who yo