Over the past year, Russia’s war against Ukraine has been one of the biggest news stories in Europe, and especially so in the Baltic countries – with their shared borders with Russia and fresh memories of the Soviet occupation.

As a news editor at Delfi.lv, one of the biggest news websites in Latvia, Polina Shilina has felt this acutely. She works for the publisher’s Russian edition, in a team of 20 people, and has covered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine since its first hours.

We spoke with Shilina about Delfi’s coverage of the war and how she and the team approach the various challenges of reporting on the biggest war in living memory – from verifying information to balancing mental health with the demands of the job.

Delfi.lv team. Photo by K?rlis Dambr?ns

The frantic early days of the invasion give way to news fatigue

Polina Shilina has worked in the Delfi newsroom for about two years. As a news editor, she has a wide range of duties – editing and translating news from news agencies, editing news stories written by Delfi reporters, as well as producing original stories herself.

She had been no stranger to the realities of Russia’s covert war in Ukraine since 2014; in early 2022, she travelled around Ukraine and visited the frontline Donbas region. However, the news of Russian president Putin launching a full-scale invasion at 5 am on February 24, came as a shock – and with a feeling of shame at the war being waged in the native language of Shilina’s parents.

Shilina has worked on the war bit since the first hours of the all-out invasion. She says the first weeks felt like working in the autopilot mode, trying to keep up with the flow of information. “In two weeks, I had a small nervous breakdown from stories in the media and photographs from Ukraine”, Shilina recalls.

During the early months of the war, the team launched daily text updates, beginning at 5 am (6 am on weekends) and ending at varying times, depending on the situation. In high-pressure situations, such as the Zaporizhzhya NPP incident in March, updates were provided continuously. 

The daily updates consisted of approximately 200 to 300 messages, while the number of separate news and publications in the first month of the war averaged about 20 per day. By January 2023, the number of individual news and publications had decreased to an average of 10 to 15 per day.

The decrease is in line with the drop in the audience’s interest compared to the first month of the war. In March 2022, news about the war garnered 22,000 to 24,000 unique pageviews on the website (the page with live updates attracted approximately 50,000 views daily), whereas now, Shilina considers 17,000 to 20,000 unique pageviews a good result.

The Ukrainians in Latvia is one of the audiences Delfi reports for. The publisher has a section on its website called “Ukrainian Refugees” where they publish news and helpful advice, such as job market information. For example, “we [report] how children from Ukraine are learning in schools, as this year all schools have fully switched to Latvian (previously, schools could teach in Russian)”, Shilina says.

Polina Shilina. Photo by K?rlis Dambr?ns

Maintaining neutrality and verifying sources during the war

Delfi condemns Russian aggression against Ukraine – but strives to uphold the principles of neutrality and independent journalism as much as possible.

That means, for example, maintaining neutrality when it comes to terminology and style. “For example, we write ‘Russian troops’ instead of ‘fascists’ or anything else that can be considered as slurs”, Shilina says.

The war has produced unprecedented troves of information like first-hand accounts on social media. Analysing and verifying it is a big part of the job. Although the Russian side cannot be trusted at all, accounts from Ukrainians still have to be corroborated by several other sources. 

Shilina says she and the team use rely major Ukrainian and Western outlets, as well as independent Russian publishers, such as:

How Delfi helps reporters deal with news stress

From the Bucha massacre to tortures in Kherson and Izium, Russian aggression in Ukraine has produced some truly horrific stories. This makes covering the war especially hard emotionally, making reporters’ mental health and emotional well-being an important puzzle for newsroom leaders.

“It’s emotionally difficult to read stories of people who have survived the occupation, about torture and rape. [For example], the story of late Borys Romanchenko who was a prisoner of 4 Nazi concentration camps and did not survive a Russian missile”, Shilina reflects.

Shilina herself has her own psychotherapist with whom discusses everything, and she tries to disconnect from news on weekends. On the teamwide level, Delfi offers and covers the cost of up to ten sessions with a psychologist. The services of a psychologist or psychotherapist are now included in the insurance policy.

Source of the cover photo: K?rlis Dambr?ns

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