SLEEK: When you’re reporting, how do you take a step back from what you’re involved in to maintain a sense of perspective?
Katrin Eigendorf: In your job, you are always a human being. You can’t prevent yourself from being emotionally affected by the shocking things you see and experience in a war. You have to bear it. You must not let yourself be carried away by emotions, because it is our job, as journalists, to report on it. When I go to a war zone, I cannot change the conditions or save people. My job is to report on it, and that’s what we have to keep going back to. Nevertheless, I don’t want to be a ‘reporting robot’ either.
In order to do good reporting, to convey what is happening on the ground, I think you need heart and mind. To engage with people’s stories, you need to build a rapport, to ‘meet’ them with empathy. Many of the people I report on are in exceptional situations and have often experienced terrible things, so it is important to approach them with the appropriate sensitivity.
I also try to be as transparent as possible with the viewer in everything I report on. We are not objective authorities. In our efforts to portray reality, our subjective view always resonates. As a woman and a mother, I look at certain things differently than perhaps a young man would. I don’t believe in a female gaze, but I am convinced that who we are also has an impact on our reporting. That makes diversity in war reporting all the more important.
S: How important is it to be in one place for a long time?
KE: I am an international reporter, which means I report from crises and wars all over the world. But I can say that reporting takes on a different quality when you know the country and, in the best case, speak the language. I find it a great advantage that I can communicate directly with the people in Ukraine and that there is no translator in between.
S: You went directly from Afghanistan to Ukraine, from one conflict to another. How was that?
KE: Afghanistan is important and I’m going back there in July. The war in Ukraine has a different dimension. As a reporter, I have never felt it so important to cover a conflict or a war as the one in Ukraine. By making transparent what is happening in this war as professional eyewitnesses, we provide the basis for political decisions. I interrupted my stay in Afghanistan in agreement with our editor-in-chief because I am convinced that Ukraine is now the conflict that moves us all the most. But that is why we must not lose sight of Afghanistan, and we are also planning for me to go back there again in July.
S: Can you elaborate a little on why you felt that way?
KE: With the attack on Ukraine, our own security and our own understanding of how we live is threatened. The war that Russia is waging against Ukraine is basically a war that it is waging against the West and its values. For Putin, Ukraine is not a nation, not a country. Putin’s autocratic regime is threatened, not Russia. Every bomb that goes down on Lviv is a bomb on the external border of the EU and NATO. Not even the threat of climate change has made us turn away from Russian oil as dramatically and question Nord Stream 2 as this war has.
S: In Ukraine, you’ve witnessed people fighting and resisting the invasion. How has it affected you?
KE: Ukraine, interestingly enough, has never played an important role ‘on the map’, even for us Russian experts. It has almost always been about Russia, far too rarely about Ukraine. I find it very problematic that, in public debate, we are now already starting to think about how Russia’s perspectives could be better taken into account, how so-called Putinversteher (‘Putin understander’) types are already ‘reporting’ back. How can one close one’s eyes to the fact that this is a brutal dictatorship that is about to wage a war of extermination against a neighbouring country and an entire people.
What is the perspective that needs to be taken into account? What is there to understand? And to turn to Afghanistan, does this mean that we will soon have to understand the Taliban and see their perspective? Do I have to show understanding for why women are beheaded because they are accused of adultery? Or admit that there may be reasons why girls do not go to school? Or why it is important, from the Taliban’s perspective, that women walk through the world veiled? I think this is problematic. Our task as journalists is to name it for what it is: a serious violation of human rights for which there must be no understanding.
But I also see that historical guilt has played a major role in the debate in Germany. What we see now is that when it comes to historical guilt, we owe Ukraine a great deal. The country was completely occupied by the Germans during the Second World War, people were exterminated and murdered in the cruellest way. Ukraine only appeared on our mental map when this war began and when Vladimir Putin cast doubt on the existence of this country. The people, whom he denies the right to be a people, have never grown together as they have in these weeks of war. I experience that there every day. The people are determined to stand up for their country and confront Russia, and they will not back down.
As featured in SLEEK 73 – PASSION. Available in print and digital here.
Katrin Eigendorf is a German journalist and war correspondent. She has reported from conflicts in Chechnya, Afghanistan and Ukraine, among others. In 2021 she received the Hanns-Joachim-Friedrichs-Prize for outstanding journalistic achievements.