THE MAN WHO STAYS

There is a moment in the conversation with PAUL RONZHEIMER when he falls silent. He is talking about how an experienced colleague took him aside in Donbass in 2014 and told him that the Ukrainian secret service had found his name in third place on a Russian death list. You expect consternation, the obligatory pause that usually follows such statements. Instead, there is a quiet laugh. At the time, he simply asked, “In what place?” And then, “Who is in first place?” Then he stayed put.

This anecdote reveals more about Paul Ronzheimer than a detailed curriculum vitae. It tells of someone whose relationship to danger is not characterised by indifference, but by a kind of fundamental curiosity – an attitude that he describes as the real fuel of his profession: the ability to be enthusiastic, to pay close attention to what is really happening.

Anyone who stops doing that has to stop doing the job, says Ronzheimer. Born in 1985, he is now deputy editor-in-chief and senior foreign correspondent at BILD, as well as host of one of the country’s most-listened-to news podcasts. He has reported from Afghanistan, the Middle East, Kabul immediately after the Taliban takeover, Tel Aviv and Gaza. But above all, he has reported on Ukraine – earlier, more intensively and more consistently than most of his German colleagues. He was there at Maidan in 2013. In 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and war broke out in Donbass, which, as he puts it, Moscow skilfully disguised as a local separatist movement. He returned in 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion.

Ronzheimer did not become a reporter because he wanted to be a war correspondent. That sets him apart from many in his profession. There was no formative film, no book, no childhood hero he emulated. His career began as an editor at the Emder Zeitung. He then completed an internship at the Axel Springer Academy and became a parliamentary reporter for BILD in Berlin. In 2012, he encountered war-like conditions for the first time in Egypt – during the fall of Mohammed Mursi. Then Ukraine, then more Ukraine, then everything else. The war came to him, not the other way around.

That may sound like a minor detail, but it isn’t. Because those who define themselves as war reporters from the outset often carry with them an aesthetic of crisis. Paul Ronzheimer, on the other hand, fundamentally describes his work as ‘reporting’: going there, looking, asking questions, showing. For him, the category of war is not a speciality, but a condition of reality to which the same principles apply as to any other. What does it mean to tell uncomfortable truths – about the side you are not hostile to?

Ronzheimer describes a case in which the Ukrainian army wanted to offer his editorial team a story: Russian soldiers had pulled out prisoners’ teeth as a means of torture. He and his team drove to the village in question. The truth: the local dentist had extracted gold teeth. Another time, he says, complaints were made to his editorial team after Nord-Stream-style revelations or reports of disputes between Zelensky and his military leadership from Ukraine itself. The message behind this: this damages our reputation in Germany. Ronzheimer simply says: “the moment you start second-guessing your reporting, you have a problem.”

This distinction – between an attitude towards war and the independence of reporting – is central to him. He takes a clear stance: Russia is the aggressor. He defends this position publicly, in articles, podcasts and interviews. But this must not compromise the second, journalistic duty to provide a complete picture. He calls this “truthful reporting”, a phrase he borrowed from Christiane Amanpour. Telling the truth – regardless of what it means for one’s own narrative.

Paul Ronzheimer talks about BILD as his home without defensiveness, but also without the kind such affiliations sometimes trigger in interviews. He knows that the name polarises – more so in Germany than anywhere else. Abroad, he says, it hardly matters; in crisis areas, its reach tends to open doors. On the Maidan, the demonstrators did not care how a publication in Berlin was being discussed. They were fighting for the European flag and their freedom. All that mattered was that someone was watching. And writing.

When asked what has changed him most as a person, he answers without hesitation: Ukraine. Not because of a specific assignment, but because of the duration. Because of the journey from 2013 to today. Because of the people he knew who died. Because of friends his own age who could not and still cannot leave the country, who were drafted and are fighting. He describes this contrast – being able to leave the country, unlike them – with a silence heavier than any expression. Bucha is an important chapter in these memories. He was one of the first reporters on that street that would, weeks later, become a symbol of Russian war crimes. The images of shot cyclists, brutally killed civilians. These images, says Ronzheimer, have burned themselves into his memory. They were shown, in many cases unblurred, because BILD believes that this is precisely the task of the press: to document what really happened. Even when it is difficult to look at.

Ronzheimer answers the question of the ethics of showing images not with rules, but with observations. Most people in extreme situations, he says, wanted to speak – wanted their story to be told. He recalls a mother he interviewed after her son – a soldier whose farewell words on the front line had gone viral – was shot dead. Slava Ukraini (Glory to Ukraine). And then: silence. And a mother who wanted him not to be forgotten.

The topic of leadership takes on a curious dual structure in conversation: Ronzheimer talks about others and about himself. Among others, he mentions Zelensky and the contrast to Ashraf Ghani – the president who boarded a plane when the Taliban invaded, versus the president who, when war broke out, was offered evacuation and said, “I need ammunition, not a ride.” Ronzheimer emphasises that comparisons are always difficult, especially when it comes to wars. But the gesture remains: those who stay change everything. Those who leave, too.

He describes leadership as making decisions in unclear situations – but not alone. The question of how close to the front line to go, how long to stay, when to return: he decides this together with his team. He mentions his cameraman Jorgos, who had become a father two weeks before the invasion. This fact changes the considerations. It makes them more concrete, more difficult, more human. Leadership, as he understands it, is not the lonely decision of the brave, but a shared responsibility.

The topic of journalism also moves him – and he formulates it with a directness that does not sound polemical, but diagnostically precise. Media companies, he says, need to invest in reporters again – not as a resource, but as brands, as voices that make exclusive realities accessible that no algorithm can reproduce. At the same time, he observes a structural monoculture of perspectives in capital-city journalism – arising not from malice, but from structural blind spots. Anyone who deals with the same politicians, colleagues and press conferences on a daily basis will almost inevitably develop a shared world view. He experienced this himself while travelling around Germany for a Sat.1 documentary: how different life and perspectives are outside Berlin.

He answers the question of what his profession has done to him – mentally, physically and as a person – with unusual candour. He says he has repressed a lot, which was probably not the best approach. He wants to work on this with a psychologist at some point. So far, he has sought out conversations with colleagues who have had similar experiences. He says this without self-pity, but also without the performative toughness sometimes worn as professional armour in this milieu.

At the end of the conversation, Paul Ronzheimer talks about Volodymyr Zelensky – a figure he knows better than most German journalists. He describes how the Ukrainian president has changed. How, as an actor, he can convey emotions that he may not be feeling at that moment. How some of the things he has said are now the opposite of what he is doing today. And how to interpret this: as tactics, as change, as exhaustion or as growth. Ronzheimer does not judge. He observes. That is perhaps the most accurate thing that can be said about him: Paul Ronzheimer does not judge hastily. Not about the powerful people he interviews, not about the institutions he works for, not about himself. He tries to see what is real. And he believes – against all the structural resistance of the information age, against the click economy and the logic of sensation – that this attempt is worthwhile. That good journalism has a future if it dares to be truly exclusive. Not in the sense of exclusion. But in the oldest sense of the word: looking where others look away.