James Verini
speaker
216 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 23 Jul
James Verini’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
So Mariupol was perfectly set up for a devastating siege, which is exactly what happened to it over the course of 81 days.
It was attacked on land by sea and by air by multiple units and divisions and fighters from Russia and even Ukrainian fighters from the Donetsk People's Republic.
and Chechen fighters.
So within a few days of the beginning of the war, a few days into the siege of Mariupol, the entire city was encircled and being under full siege, which wouldn't let up for 81 days.
And as you know, to this day, it's the only major Ukrainian city that Russia took and has kept.
Russia also took Kherson, but it didn't keep Kherson.
And as you also know, it was the ugliest episode of the war in its way, at least when we were able to see the war sort of in full view at the beginning.
That's very kind of you.
There are a few answers to that.
In one sense, the book chose me, not to put it too glibly, but as soon as all the reporters got to Ukraine at the beginning of the invasion, the Ukrainian military and government made it clear
that it was going to be very difficult to work with them as a journalist.
In part, this was because, of course, they were trying to counter an invasion by the Russian military and they had more important things to deal with than hundreds of international reporters running around whom they had to protect.
In part, it was because they did actually genuinely want to protect reporters.
You'll recall that a few died or were very badly injured at the very beginning.
And in part, it was because the Ukrainian government wanted to control the narrative.
The Ukrainian government immediately took control, essentially, of all the independent media in Ukraine.
The point being that it was very, very difficult to work with the soldiers, much less the military higher ups.
Individual soldiers knew perfectly well not to talk to reporters.
There were press liaisons in every unit who made it pretty clear that they didn't want you around or you should stay to the side.
So many of us found from the start that the only way we were going to be able to tell the story of this war was via the civilians.
Showing 61–80 of 216 · page 4 of 11
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