CBS News’ Holly Williams calls the experience of covering Russia’s invasion “surreal,” and even if that word gets a bit overused, she has good reason.
“This is Europe,” she told Deadline in an interview on Thursday. “For a lot of Americans, it’s very recognizable. It’s a similar lifestyle. It’s the same shops. It’s the same kind of quality of life. And now they’re being hit by airstrikes and missile strikes. It’s very distressing, actually, as someone who’s spent a lot of time here.”
Williams, a foreign correspondent for CBS News since 2012, reported from the front lines of the crisis in the prelude to the invasion, with a story on a village in eastern Ukraine that already was the scene of shelling on Monday night, as the country’s military have been fighting Russian-backed separatists.
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“We’re afraid. Only a fool wouldn’t be afraid,” one woman, a factory worker, told her. “We don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Williams, who had been to the area with the president of Ukraine last year, said people “are kind of hanging on to a kind of tenuous existence a few miles from the frontline.”
“What was so sad about that place is that they said to us that there was a lot of fighting there in 2014, 2015 and 2016, and then things had kind of calmed down,” she said. “And then suddenly there was shelling in the village again. And the people who live in that village are not wealthy people. They are mainly factory workers. They don’t earn a lot of money. And so when there’s shelling in there, and then their apartment is covered in shrapnel damage, and they lose their possessions and their windows are blown out — quite apart from the fear, which is obviously huge, there’s also this this big financial hit. And then the anxiety. The woman we interviewed said, ‘What should she do?’ This is where her livelihood is. This is where her home is. Where do you run?”
On Thursday morning, when the Russian attacks started, Williams was in Kharkiv, reporting from a vantage point on a balcony in the city. As much as there were warnings that an invasion was imminent, what was striking for her an other correspondents was how the first sound of explosions came so soon after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a military operation.
“Before it happened, there was always the possibility that Putin was playing this kind of high-stakes game of Cold War brinkmanship,” Williams said. “And the Russians were even talking about comparisons with the Cuban Missile Crisis. There was an attempt to kind of extract concessions from the West over this crisis. So there was always the possibility that ultimately Vladimir Putin perhaps didn’t want to launch an invasion of Ukraine, or perhaps not a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, perhaps a smaller incursion with a different kind of strategic purpose.”
As the situation grew more dire in recent weeks, Williams said, Ukrainians had different ways of showing their concern. “Different threat assessments, just like different governments have different threat assessments,” she said.
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“Most Ukrainians we spoke to were extremely worried, but then some of them would say, ‘Well, you know, I think it’s only a 10% chance,’ whereas others would say ‘No, I think he’s gonna do it, and I have my emergency bag packed and I’m ready to go,’ or ‘I’m training with a gun and I’m going to defend my country.’ I think what was really interesting for a lot of foreign journalists is that they were just was so stoical for so long, and not panicking.”
The government, she said, had a message to not panic.
“They’ve been living with Russian aggression for many years,” she said. “Ukraine already had been invaded by Russia back in 2014, when they seized Crimea. They had this war out east that’s been very deadly. And then I think part of it is that a lot of Ukrainians felt this kind of sense of pride and determination that that they may have felt intimidated, but they they didn’t want to show it.”
Williams, who covered the protests in Ukraine in 2014 and has returned multiple times since then, says that Ukrainians are “still incredibly stoic.”
“I’m not seeing people weeping in the street,” she said. “I’m not seeing people have panic attacks. But we are now for the first time we’re seeing panic buying in supermarkets, for instance. In that capital of Kyiv, there’s this huge traffic jam leading out of the city, people trying to head west. People were lining up to donate blood here in Kharkiv today. A lot of people are taking shelter here in Kharkiv, and it’s the same story in Kyiv, in the subway system. Because, obviously, they’re deep down. There’s a lot of cover from missile and airstrikes. We were just down there a few hours ago, and there are hundreds of people sitting down there, with maybe a suitcase with their kids. Some people taking their pets down there. They’ve got cats and dogs down there.”
That’s the kind of story that she thinks resonates with U.S. viewers.
“It’s my job as a journalist to kind of shine a light on what’s happening to people, to make that connection, so the Americans can kind of see just what it’s like for ordinary Ukrainians to be living through this,” Williams said. “And if I do a story that’s impactful in that way, then I think I’ve kind of done my job for that day.”
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