Filming in Ukraine
When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th of 2022, like much of the world, I felt helpless to do anything but watch. However, this conflict was distinctly different in coverage. In Ukraine almost everyone has a smart phone and a social media account, and videos of fighting or atrocities spread like wildfire to tens of millions of online followers.
Personally, I was following dozens of accounts on Twitter, and I nightly spent hours before bed reading updates from volunteers: from people running supplies, to those evacuating civilians from battle zones, to medics treating wounded, to soldiers on the front lines. It was a wealth of near-real-time information and disinformation as the world had never before been privy to. Then when reports of atrocities started popping up along with accusations and denials, there were organizations like Bellingcat to cut through the BS and provide analysis and evidence.
As the one-year anniversary of the invasion approached, and western media predicted a massive event by the Russian forces to coincide with the occasion, I could no longer stand on the sidelines.
I rented a camera package, borrowed some body armor, and I set off to help.
At 2 in the morning, on the 23rd of February, 2023, I crossed into Ukraine and arrived at the
Lviv train station.
In Lviv, I became friends with Western filmmakers and YouTube Influencers.
I then took a three-hour train ride to Rivne.
Here I spent a few weeks building relationships with members of the Emergency Services, filming training exercises and providing their departments with cinematic videos for their official social media pages.
Eventually I took a train to Kharkiv and then caught a ride down to Balakliya.
It was the first town liberated from russian occupation in September of 2022, and the area is heavily mined. Here I filmed with EOD / De-mining teams which were focused on clearing power lines and critical infrastructure.
Many stores and buildings in Balakliya had suffered missile and artillery strikes, but even more devastated were the little villages that had been shelled, mined, and cut off from power and water.
Ukraine is now the most mined country in the world, and a rule of thumb is
to stay to hard surfaces. Unexploded ordnance is a daily killer of civilians and a plague to farmers, and if the war stopped today, it would still take the better part of a century to clear the country of mines and ordnance.
2025 - 2026
In 2025, I returned to Ukraine to film with a National Police drone school and drone teams. Due to security concerns I can't currently share many of my videos, but I am in the process of building a documentary about the men and women who are harnessing ever evolving tech to fight off the russian invaders... in a war which has lasted years... and has no end in sight.
