In a flash protest to mark the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, 20 coffins are laid out in Republic Square in Paris.
The coffins —19 open and one closed — symbolize journalists held by Russia. The sealed coffin is a reference to Victoria Roshchyna, who died while in Russian detention under unclear circumstances.
Overall, the conflict has contributed to 13 deaths of local and foreign journalists and 47 cases of journalists being injured as they cover the war, according to Reporters Without Borders, known as RSF. One Ukrainian journalist remains missing.
Cases include Russian strikes on TV stations, gunfire, shelling and journalists being hit by Russian drones while covering Ukrainian military operations.
Among those affected is Fox News journalist Benjamin Hall, who was seriously injured in an attack that killed two of his colleagues in March 2022.
Hall told VOA the road to recovery has been hard.
“For the first six or seven months, I was at a military hospital in Texas. And when you are going through the traumatic recovery, and you’re in the ICU, it’s brutal,” Hall said. “The amount of pain — you don’t know what’s coming ahead. But I found those to be some of the easiest moments.”
Returning home, he says, and coming to terms not only with life-changing injuries, including an amputation, but also with the trauma has been harder than the immediate treatment for his injuries.
The veteran correspondent was traveling to the village of Horenka outside of Kyiv with his colleagues, French video journalist Pierre Zakrzewski and Ukrainian journalist Oleksandra Kuvshynova, when a Russian mortar attack hit the vehicle two times. Hall was the only survivor.
“I had one goal, and that was to get home. And it was to get better and walk again, learn to walk again,” he said.
“Before, I was just this journalist. Suddenly, you are someone who was injured, and people see you in a different way. And I found that part of that recovery was a bit harder,” Hall added.
Returning to journalism was a priority for his recovery.
“And so, as soon as I could, I was trying to get back in the field, and I returned to Ukraine,” he said.
On Nov. 20, 2023, Hall returned to Ukraine and interviewed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The journalist traveled by train and said it was a milestone in his recovery. When he was evacuated after the shelling, he left on a train in critical health. Now he was returning on one.
“That in particular meant a lot to me,” he said.
Covering the war in Ukraine changed Hall’s life, but he said the biggest impact is being made by local journalists on the ground — “all journalists who cover conflict.”
As a foreign correspondent, “you go somewhere for a little bit, but you leave. I can only imagine the weight of being there day in, day out, and having to continue reporting for three years,” Hall said.
That is where resilience comes in, said Pauline Maufrais, the Ukraine area manager for RSF.
Local journalists put their lives at risk, work under very dangerous conditions and are under constant threat of being hit by shelling, drones or being kidnapped in occupied territories.
“All of them basically became war correspondents, in 2022,” Maufrais said.
In wartime, it is hard to find accountability. Russia’s Defense Ministry informed Roshchyna’s family in October 2024 that she had died in custody.
“Since then, we are asking for answers. We’re asking Russia to give us an explanation about what happened to Victoria,” Maufrais said.
Russia has not yet given clarification on the cause of her death nor returned her body to her family.
“We want to know what happened. We want Russia to explain what happened to Victoria Roshchyna. And it is important that we continue working on that, and we [will] continue asking those questions until we have answers,” she added.
Roshchyna, an International Women’s Media Foundation awardee for courage in journalism, disappeared in August 2023 while traveling to report on Russian-occupied territories. It was eight months before her family learned that she had been imprisoned.
The 27-year-old journalist was due to be returned when her death was announced.
In addition to journalists’ risks of physical safety are economical and logistical challenges, Maufrais said.
“Media outlets lacking professional journalists, many left Ukraine in exile; economic challenges; the destruction of communication towers and TV stations; as well as pressure from the Ukrainian government for those journalists who are covering corruption within the country,” said Maufrais.
Maufrais said at least 329 media outlets have closed since the invasion, often because of a decrease in advertising revenue.
For foreign correspondents like Hall, the experiences of covering the war have shaped his life.
He recalled interviewing a young woman taken hostage on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack and held for months.
“I realized that throughout my whole career, I had never quite been able to understand people who had gone through these traumatic events, who had been in wars. But finally, I did. So, I think it made me a much better journalist,” Hall said.
