’Shockwaves’: Australian reporter reveals ‘near death experience’ during brutal Ukraine war
An Australian man has opened up about the harrowing moment he was nearly killed while reporting on the bloody war in Ukraine.
Few things in life give you more perspective than a near-death experience.
I had one last year while reporting from Ukraine when a Russian cruise missile was intercepted above my hotel in the port city of Odessa.
The blast was so strong it sent shockwaves through an open window and was so loud that my ears rang for the rest of the day.
When the air raid siren ended, I went outside and paced the empty streets of the so-called Paris of eastern Europe for hours, its grand gothic buildings barricaded with sandbags, writhing with indignation.
How dare the Russians try to kill me? What had I ever done to them?
The Russians obviously weren’t trying to kill me specifically. They didn’t even know I was there. But the question highlights the unbridgeable gulf in perspective that exists between those watching the war from the comfort of their living rooms to those living it.
For me, the missile was deeply personal.
Had I threatened or antagonised the Russians by simply being so close to their borders in the same way Moscow accused NATO of creeping up to its borders?
The argument holds water with some Russian and foreign policy scholars in the West and neutral countries like India and Brazil. But it is intellectually ingenuine.
NATO is not a government and it does not command any of the sovereign armies on Russia’s borders.
NATO is a piece of paper, an agreement, a pact that can only be enacted when a member state is attacked.
If a member state were to attack Russia, NATO wouldn’t come to its aid. It would probably kick them out. So it makes no sense to say NATO threatens Russia.
Perhaps Russia suspected there was a Nazi cell operating inside my hotel? After all, denazification was the initial justification for an invasion and only recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish, of being a Nazi sympathiser.
But during 10 days in Odessa, I did not see anyone who looked remotely like a Nazi in my hotel or anywhere else in the city. In fact, I visited a synagogue where Jews practised their religion freely – not what one would expect in a country that requires denazification.
Had I offended the Russians with my reportage or written something that constitutes a crime in Russia, like calling the war a war instead of a special military operation? No. My report on the war had not been published at that time.
So why were the Russians so callous with my life and those of all the other nice people I met in Odessa?
The answer came to me that evening when I returned to my hotel.
Russia has nothing to offer the world and the world wants nothing from Russia.
So its reflex action, like that of a schoolyard bully with a massive weight advantage over his peers, is to attack.
Attacking – war, murder, rape – is intrinsic to the Russian condition. Russia kills because it can. Russia kills and therefore it is. Its unofficial ideology is not that different to that of the Vikings: take what you want, violence solves everything and your enemies are subhumans, valuable only as subjects or slaves.
But at least the Vikings held the lives of their Norsemen warriors in the highest regard, whereas Russia also regards its own soldiers as subhuman, valuable only as cannon fodder.
“So what?” you ask again and again. “Ukraine is on the other side of the world and with the exception of higher fuel prices, it hasn’t affected me. Why should I care?”
Because Ukraine is just a stepping stone for Russia, one of at least 18 known countries where it is conducting special military operations either with its troops as is the case in Moldova, Belarus and Georgia or through the Wagner Group.
Wagner is not a mercenary group as it is often described in the news. It’s a quasi-government collective of active reservists in the Russian special forces with two objectives: to earn foreign capital by pillaging the natural resources of the world’s most corrupt, dysfunctional and war-torn countries; and to kill, torture and rape anyone who gets in their way or who lives too close to the mines or oilfields Wagner controls.
A new report released by the UN last month showed Wagner troops in Mali massacred 500 people, mostly unarmed peasants, in the village of Maura.
The distance between Moscow and Asia has not made our part of the world immune to Russia’s blood lust.
Every day in Myanmar, Russia-trained pilots use Russian SU-25 jets to machine gun hospitals and schools in territory held by rebels fighting for democracy. A former captain from the Myanmar Air Force recently told the BBC if not for the SU-25s, Myanmar’s military dictatorship would already have fallen.
If that’s true, Russia can now do anything it wants in Myanmar. And if Wagner’s playbook in Africa is anything to go by, Russia will soon start using Myanmar as a springboard for more special military operations in the region.
Despite the clear and present danger Russia poses to the free world, only 45 of 195 countries are giving aid to Ukraine, and most of it is coming from the US. But if Trump retakes the White House next year, he’s promised to end the war in Ukraine on his first day in office.
And the only way he could do that is by turning off the cash spigot, forcing Kyiv to cede to Russia the Ukrainian territory it now holds and allowing Russia to focus on its next war.
But there’s another more pressing reason the free world needs to get off the fence in regards to Ukraine.
Despite endless news reports about Ukraine’s indefatigable spirit and the looming punching power of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, a growing number of military analysts in the West are saying the pendulum on the battlefield has shifted and Russia is now winning the war.
Russia has a history of starting badly in wars but then gaining the advantage through its strategic depth, as occurred months after it invaded Finland in 1939 and in the second half of WWII when Stalin started throwing millions of its people at the then-seemingly unbeatable Nazi war machine.
In December, Putin announced plans to increase Russia’s armed forces from 1.15 million combat personnel to 1.5 million. But, like Stalin, he has millions or even tens of millions more bodies at his disposal.
Russia’s ability to punch out more munitions is likewise limited only to the size of its economy, which is the ninth largest in the world, compared to Ukraine’s, which was the 53rd largest before it shrank by a third last year.
Russia has already destroyed half of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, according to the UN, and will doubtlessly strive to destroy the other half next winter.
Ukraine’s population has already shrunk by 8.2 million people, or 18 per cent, since the start of the war, 95 per cent of whom are women and children. This is creating a demographic time bomb that will cause the population to decline by up to 35 per cent by 2040, according to Population, Space and Place, a scientific journal.
The metrics on the battlefield are just as discouraging, where Russia has learned from its initial mistakes and made significant tactical and operational improvements. Ukraine has fought and lost four major urban battles – Severodonetsk, Lysychansk, Soledar and Bukhmut – suffering progressively worse levels of casualties in each. And Ukraine’s air force is no match for Russia’s.
By giving Ukraine just enough firepower to stop the Russians from advancing further, we are only postponing the inevitable: some form of Ukrainian surrender and a carte blanche for Russia to expand its war against humanity in any part of the world it sees fit.
But there is another option: arm Ukraine to the teeth and let it cripple Russia to the point that it will have no choice but to succumb to NATO’s orbit for protection from China, and become an ally of the West as Germany did.
“War does not determine who is right or wrong,” wrote Bertrand Russel, a British philosopher who was imprisoned for pacifism during WW1 but changed his views during WWII.
“Only who is left.”
Ian Lloyd Neubauer is a freelance journalist and photojournalist. Follow him on Twitter @ian_neubauer
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