Three years of war: five reflections from our coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

Editor’s note: we’re republishing a version of the article that was originally published in February 2024.

February 2025 marks the third-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and eleven years since the start of Russia’s military aggression in 2014.

It is hard to boil down these years of tragedy into a flowery essay or even a few pithy remarks. We’re all tired. The Fix has deep roots in Ukraine, both in terms of team members and our mission, which is to shed a light on the reality of media globally, in countries like Ukraine where media survive on grit and creativity. 

To mark the anniversary, however, here are five lessons and reflections from our coverage of Ukraine’s media market over the past years.

• Ukrainian media proved surprisingly resilient – offering useful lessons for others. Ukrainian news publishers have been in better shape than one might have predicted before the all-out war, thanks to a combination of international support and innate resilience. International media would do well learning from their examples, especially when it comes to smaller, niche outlets.

• Ukrainian journalists have to make difficult ethical decisions everyday. Covering the war takes a mental toll on everyone, even reporters writing about the conflict remotely. But Ukrainian journalists have the most difficult job as they are balancing journalistic standards, civil duty and personal feelings when their country is at war.

• Media are more than just journalists. The war in Ukraine has been perhaps the most-covered military conflict in history, largely because of the influx of global media coming to the country. Ukrainian freelancers, fixers and field producers have been instrumental to enabling this work, even if much less visible. They have put their lives at risk and in some cases were killed helping cover the war, like 24-year-old consultant for Fox News Oleksandra “Sasha” Kuvshynova who died alongside photojournalist Pierre Zakrzewski in March 2022.

• Traditional publishers have to compete with new media projects that amassed a huge audience but aren’t bothered with journalistic standards. In the past two years Ukraine has seen a noticeable decline in the popularity of TV as a source to news, while Telegram became the go-to news platform. Telegram channels gained a massive audience by getting the platform right, relying on user-generated content and not particularly caring about journalistic standards. Traditional media outlets have to be smart at competing with them.
• We need reliable media more than ever. The war has been well-covered on social media, but it were AP journalists Mstyslav Chernov, Evgeniy Maloletka, and Vasilisa Stepanenko who stayed in Mariupol during Russia’s siege in early 2022 and were able to show the atrocities to the whole world. Reliable news outlets have been crucial to reporting on this war, and we need high-quality journalism more than ever.

Source of the cover photo: courtesy of Anastasiia Kuzmenko

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