Julia Kochetova’s self-portrain from her project War is Personal
Below is Julia’s full comment:
“Since the start of the big war it’s been difficult for me to watch my foreign colleagues treat these events coldly and perhaps more professionally. For them, this is just another war, another work trip. Yes, they are risking their lives here, same as Ukrainian journalists.
“But for us it’s very personal. Because it’s our loved ones, our relatives and people close to us that are fighting in the ranks of the defense forces. It is us searching for the remains of our friends. No foreign reporter, no matter how big of heart, will ever feel the depth of the pain that Ukrainians feel.
“We have been living with collective trauma for generations. So I wanted to make a story that would make the war not just a spot on the map, not just Western support tranche numbers, not just a battle. Because the whole world has come to know the phrase ‘the battle for Bakhmut’, but it doesn’t know the names of those who died in it.
“I wanted to give names and faces to this war. I won’t be able to show everyone, but I can at least show the ones I meet.
“The project was a chat in Signal, the most secure messenger app that we mainly use to talk to soldiers. I wanted the story to have a voice, an intimacy, a face. Sometimes the face is mine.”
A new recruit of the Huntsmen Brigade No. 68 training near the frontline in the Donetsk oblast. Photo by Julia Kochetova
A portrait of a fallen soldier at the Field of Mars near the Lychakiv Cemetery in Lviv, August 17, 2022. Photo by Julia Kochetova
After February 24, 2022, she resumed active reporting on the impact of the war, taking photos in Kyiv and being among the first journalists to arrive at the sites of residential house strikes. She has filmed Odesa, the Irpin evacuation, the occupation aftermath in Bucha and the Kyiv oblast villages, the work of Kharkiv first responders; documented the frontline work of paramedics.
In 2022, she was awarded the Order of Merit III degree.
Two years into Russia’s full-scale invasion, she continues to report on the war and its consequences.
The IMI carries out Ukraine’s only freedom of speech monitoring and keeps a list of high quality and sustainable online media outlets, documents Russia’s crimes against the media committed in the course of the war on Ukraine. The IMI has representatives in 20 oblasts of Ukraine and a network of “Mediabaza” hubs to provide journalists with continuous support. The IMI’s partners include Reporters Without Borders and Freedom House; the organization is a member of the International Organization for the Protection of Freedom of Expression (IFEX).
Source: Institute of Mass Information
The main photo: Julia Kochetova’s Facebook page
