Mstyslav Chernov, an Associated Press video journalist, was in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol in February 2022 when Russian troops invaded. When other journalists left, he and his team stayed – and continued filming.
“At that point the city was completely surrounded,” said the Ukrainian filmmaker says. “I just realized that we have to record everything. Every image, every second will be invaluable later, for war crimes investigations, for the history of Ukraine.”
Chernov and his team later won a Pulitzer Prize for their work in Mariupol. The new PBS FRONTLINE and Associated Press documentary, 20 Days in Mariupol, is based on footage the team shot during the first days of the war in Ukraine. Chernov says he wants to show audiences what it’s like to be trapped in a city descending into chaos.
“You hear, feel and smell the pain all the time.” Chernov says. “And the hunger that comes with the siege, people collecting water, people outside collecting snow and running to their shelters just to find the snow melting in the water. People looking for food in looted stores.”
Chernov did his best to capture everything – documenting a bombed-out maternity hospital and mass graves – but admits that he occasionally had to stop recording because the moments were too harsh or the people he was filming needed help. He says the war is surprising in that it shows what people are capable of.
“I’ve seen people who thought they were so brave and capable of anything, but then when faced with the difficult decision of whether to risk their life or do something… they would choose to run,” he says. “And the people I never expected to be brave and stick it out until the end, they do it – and it even surprises them.”
A doctor Chernov met in Mariupol told him that war reveals qualities in people’s characters that would not otherwise be visible: good people get better. Bad people get worse. “I am sure there is a better way to understand our own nature. But that is the reality of life in a war zone,” says Chernov.
“20 Days in Mariupol” premieres November 21 on PBS FRONTLINE and will stream on YouTube, the FRONTLINE website, the PBS app and the PBS Documentaries Prime Video Channel.
Interview highlights
How the team was able to cover Mariupol
For most Ukrainians and for many journalists who have been covering Ukraine since 2014, this war, this Russian invasion, began in 2014. For me as a conflict journalist, my work began from there – and for many Ukrainian journalists too. We simply became conflict journalists – cameramen, photographers, writers – we all became war journalists. And that was our new reality. And in all the years I’ve been covering other conflicts for the Associated Press… I’ve kept going back to Ukraine and the front lines and kept trying to draw attention to it [the] ongoing conflict. And we knew that Mariupol had significant, symbolic, tactical significance for Russia because it was directly on the road to Crimea. And we didn’t know what the scale of the invasion would be. But in any case, Mariupol would be the big goal for them. That’s why we decided to go there.
About the destruction and suffering in Mariupol
It’s very, very personal for all of us. I grew up in Kharkiv and Kharkiv is a similar city culturally and visually, even Mariupol. To be there and see the city being destroyed indiscriminately and how women, children and men were killed and their homes destroyed was just psychologically devastating. And it was definitely the most dangerous experience I had during these years of war. But at that point it was crucial that we focused on the number of people, on the impact that these attacks, this invasion are having on the civilian population. Because Russia repeatedly claimed that it was not targeting civilians, only military objects, which was clearly not the case. … That’s what we expected [would] I’ll be filming in the city, but to be honest we didn’t expect it to be this brutal. Nobody did.
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About the fact that it is the only team that sends images from Mariupol
I haven’t seen anything else [was] is published in Mariupol. … The editorial team also told us that apparently no one else is reporting on it. Now we know that a major Lithuanian filmmaker was filming in Mariupol at the same time as us. He sent nothing and tried to escape. His name is Mantas Kvedaravicius and he tried to escape in the same way as us, although a little later through Russian checkpoints. And unfortunately he was captured and executed. …
I have to tell the truth. I am very afraid of death and pain. But then again, we don’t have much choice at the moment. And since I chose this career, I decided to challenge myself and my fears. Then I will stick to this decision for as long as possible.
About the moments that are difficult to capture on film
A lot of this chaos reigns in the film, but there are still many moments that just can’t be captured because nothing is happening visually. If you just lay down on the floor of the hospital at night and bombs are falling all around the hospital, and all the patients are in those hallways – because people wouldn’t sleep in the wards, they would just sleep on the floor of the hospital hallways – all people who were in pain because there were very, very few painkillers left, and they would suffer and they would moan and they would whisper to each other and they would call for nurses. But then there was only one nurse [who] couldn’t even sleep, and she couldn’t ease the pain of these people. …
But at the same time, there was someone with a guitar and he or she was just sitting there playing and singing. And suddenly everything is transformed and people come together and it’s back, full of hope and full of life. So there is always an emotional roller coaster of hope and despair, of chaos and silence. And it goes up and down and it just never stops. And you want it to stop, and you desperately want it to stop, but it just doesn’t work.
About the deaths of children
You can’t prepare for this. And I don’t think a normal person can prepare for that [themselves] for that. …But you know that your feelings are completely irrelevant at the moment because the parents are the ones who are hit the hardest. I can only imagine how that feels. And I wish that no one ever feels that. I think it is the greatest tragedy in the world, the loss of a child’s life. And no one should ever experience that.
How they escaped Mariupol alive
It was day 20 and the Green Corridor had just been negotiated and opened, although it was not yet clear whether it would last or not, whether it would be official or not, whether people would be shot leaving through this Green Corridor or not. But thousands of cars were leaving the city and…we knew this was our chance. … We were very lucky to pass through 15 Russian checkpoints, about 100 kilometers inside the occupied territory. … We reached a Red Cross convoy. …And we just rode in this convoy. And that saved us even the most difficult part of the trip.
Lauren Krenzel and Seth Kelley produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the Internet.
Copyright 2023 Fresh Air. To see more, visit Fresh Air.