Flak jackets and funding: the challenges of freelance journalism during a war

WIJ member Jen Stout is currently reporting from Ukraine, where she has been based since April. Here she shares what she has learned about being a freelancer covering a war.

How do you prepare to cover the war in Ukraine as a freelancer with no experience of conflict zones?

'Just don't go' was the answer I got from many, usually with an added expletive. Going to Ukraine, I was told, would be the most selfish and reckless decision of my life. I gave up on the idea a few times.

To be clear, I don't think anyone should rush in unprepared to this. That is, indeed, selfish and reckless. I've met journalism students who've never done a day's reporting, telling me they were 'going in': no flak jacket, no helmet, no knowledge of Ukraine or any language ability. I told them not to, probably using the same expletives.

I'd spent my whole adult life dreaming of, and trying to, report in Russia and Ukraine, from the age of 16 when I started learning Russian in my Shetland high school, and started reading Anna Politkovskaya's articles. I'd finally got to Moscow in November last year, on a programme for foreigners, and was about to start my stint as a reporter when we had to leave in a hurry. I was glad to go, being of course opposed to the war, the regime and the creeping fascism taking hold there. But I wasn't about to go home.

“‘Just don’t go was the answer I got from many...”

From Vienna I went to the Ukrainian border in Romania, down near the Black Sea where a ferry crosses the Danube. I spent a month there, interviewing the refugees arriving from Odesa and Mykolaiv. And trying every single possible avenue to get the safety training and body armour I needed to go to Ukraine.

There is funding for the (very expensive) training, but to be eligible for the Rory Peck Trust you have to have worked as a freelance for 18 months – continuously. Overall, I've done two and a half years, but not continuous. Accordingly, I was not eligible. I was pulling my hair out when I found a short, London-based version of the course. Flying back to the UK from Romania was not cheap, but the Sunday Post, which I'd been writing for, and WIJ Scotland, helped with the costs, and so by early April I had the training certificate and could do a reasonable job of a tourniquet.

The next hurdle was a flak jacket with body armour plates, and a ballistics helmet. Again, I tried everything, emailing every company, every charity. The invasion had of course prompted a massive demand, and prices had shot up. The big media outlets were buying everything up, I was told – freelancers didn't stand a chance. I'm a member of RSF, but they didn't even answer emails. At many points I just despaired of finding anything, but got there in the end, thanks partly to a brilliant Romanian friend who somehow sourced an ex-UN jacket from a contact in Kabul. It came down nearly to my knees, so I couldn't walk (the other big problem - all this kit is invariably 'large male' size and I'm barely 5ft) but I put the plates in a small flak jacket another friend found. These two are Stuart Paver and Marian Machedon, tireless volunteers capable of magicking up impossible items, and both responsible for a huge amount of aid and supplies getting into Ukraine.

It was with one of their deliveries that I got to Odesa, flying through the checkpoints with a military escort. I spent three weeks in this extraordinary city – I'd dreamed of seeing Odesa for so many years and felt incredibly lucky to be there, even if the circumstances were grim. Almost daily rocket attacks began in the city not long after I arrived, and I was there reporting on the devastation afterwards – destroyed apartment blocks, families torn apart, grief and bewilderment and fury. By now I was writing regularly for the Sunday Post, a fantastic paper that deserves huge credit for investing in foreign reporting and paying freelances properly (and promptly). The scorched earth where great newspapers used to stand is a depressing place, and I was told by some once-prestigious titles that they have absolutely no budget for foreign news. Where many papers now rely on rehashed agency copy, the Sunday Post recognises the worth of having reporters on the ground. They should get a lot of credit for that.

From Odesa to Mykolaiv, on to Kharkiv and Kyiv, and soon I'm going to the Donetsk region. Being freelance obviously can be challenging. Costs are high, things like the conflict zone insurance that's totally essential. But I value hugely the freedom to go wherever I choose, to stay longer if it's interesting; to spend an entire day just reading about Kharkiv in the 1920s for a long article, if that's what I fancy doing. I meet TV colleagues who are always dashing about for the next live and don't envy them much; newspaper and radio stories suit me very well.

One of my favourite ways of telling a story is still radio, and doing regular despatches for Radio Scotland's Saturday programme, Radio 4's 'From Our Own Correspondent' and RTE’s World Report has been a real pleasure. I feel with these I can draw people in, help them feel, hear and see what's around me. A lot of these scripts are based on conversations, chance encounters – and little details that stand out when I'm reporting, and want to expand on.

Seeing Ukrainian friends again has given me some of the happiest moments of the last three months – especially in Kharkiv, a city I love so much. They've given me great insight into the context and history and shifting attitudes in the country. Many of them are the activists who've been so integral to helping a small army defend this country since 2014, integral to this huge project of building a Ukrainian civic society and patching up the holes in the state. Under bombing and sirens they've kept up this work, tirelessly, and they're some of the most extraordinary people I've ever met. And then there's the colleagues I've met along the way, both foreign and Ukrainian– an endless source of advice, inspiration and friendship, and sometimes whisky.

Now I'm thinking of going home; three months on the road and I'm starting to loathe my rucksack and to miss Shetland like a physical ache. I've never appreciated before how lucky I am to have a home that is safe. To be able to just leave all this, the sirens and worry and rockets, is a privilege my friends here don't have. I'll come back to Ukraine in the autumn. I hope it's to report on rebuilding and not war, but I suspect it'll be both.