Frontline reporting is difficult and scary but a vital component in the information war

Frontline reporting from Ukraine has been at times scarce, difficult and downright scary. But it has been a vital component, the key element in what war theoreticians and wonks like to call the information war.

The reporters have shown what is quite different about this 21st century war in a civilised European country.

It is not so much a “war among the people,” Mao’s term recently reminted by Britain’s General Rupert Smith, but a war on the people by the Russians trying to strangle Mariupol and Kharkiv, Irpin, Kherzon and Odessa.

The reporters and photographers, print writers and broadcasters have been showing us what is going on with great effect and at huge risk.

Sky’s veteran Stuart Ramsay and his crew were lucky to escape with their lives when their car was ambushed, at distance by a sniper nest open an open road in East Ukraine – the firepower was tremendous from light machine guns and sniper rivals – putting down hundreds of rounds in a matter of seconds.

The deserted suburbs in the yawning empty streets spell danger. They are deserted for a reason usually; they mean bombardment by artillery and mortar. A well-aimed volley from professional snipers – both sides have plenty – are to be expected.

The reports from Ramsay and his colleagues from Sky, Channel 4 and the BBC are brave and brilliantly revealing of the reality of what this war is – the desperate throes of an over-armed and out-of-date army trying to turn disaster into some macabre victory by smashing a country and its people to bits.

The reports by Sarah Raynsford, Orla Guerin and Lyse Doucet give the ghastly fear and flavour of the battle space - where a thousand ministry briefings and prognostications from armchair strategists and generals fall short.

Raynsford, Guerin and Catherine Philp of the Times show what the war on the refugees and families huddling in freezing basements really means. We are facing now the of at least five million refugees within a month. This is the brutal testimony and verdict of the failure of Nato, its allies, the OSCE, EU and UN to provide security and peace.

This week Anthony Loyd of the Times reported from hospitals in Kharkiv – in one of the most memorable dispatches I have ever witnessed from a colleague (and friend).

“In Kharkiv’s hospitals the faces of war are sculpted in flying glass and burning shrapnel,” he begins, “Wounded children stare up from their beds, listless with pain and trauma. Some weep in shock.”

Simple straightforward eyewitness reporting now plays the vital role in the information battle, not Tiktok, Instagram, and the tainted Facebook.

Bellingcat’s superb investigative reporters have revealed the breakdown in secure communications for the Russians, the death from enemy fire of a second general of the once-elite 41st Russian Shock Army.

In Moscow , the BBC’s dogged and adroit Steve Rosenberg has got back on the streets again, despite the threats of jail for spreading rumour and fake news. His interviews reveal the disquiet and rage of some Muscovites, but and the zombie like devotion of others to their supreme leader and his Ukraine ‘security operation.’

Truth is said to be the first casualty of war – Phil Knightley wrote a best selling book with this title denouncing most of combat reporting as fraud. In this instance, at least, how would be quite wrong. About Ukraine we should thank our colleagues on the frontline for providing a truth and insight we wouldn’t have otherwise.

Their tale is one of sorrow, pity and fear – and which should encourage us in the risk-averse West to start thinking , and face up to the challenge of a European West that has been changed utterly by the past fortnight.