For this week’s episode of The Interview I spoke to Dan McLaughlin, a foreign correspondent covering the war in Ukraine for The Irish Times. He has spent decades reporting from eastern Europe and Russia, in cities including Budapest, Moscow, and most recently Kyiv. This is a special episode for me: Dan is my uncle.

Last week, he was forced to leave Kyiv as the Russian invasion escalated. McLaughlin reported on his departure from the capital city, which he described as almost entirely deserted, for the Times. He left on a packed train bound for Lviv, the western part of Ukraine, which remains relatively calm.

Having been denied a quick victory, Russian forces have turned to indiscriminate bombing of their neighbor. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said the invasion, which Moscow has laughably cast as an effort to liberate Ukraine, will continue. The UN estimates that 1.5 million people have fled Ukraine as refugees since the invasion began 11 days ago.

“Putin is trying to sell this to the Russian people as a sort of liberation campaign,” Dan told me. “I thought that that might prevent him from doing really horrible things here. Because how do you claim to be a liberator of a country that you’re just annihilating?”

Now, it seems attempts at avoiding civilian casualties have “gone out of the window,” Dan said. “I dread to think really how how brutal the campaign could get.”

As Russian troops continue the siege on Ukraine and its major cities, at home Putin has cracked down on free speech and the press. Major foreign news outlets and social media platforms have been banned in Russia, and a law was passed to imprison anyone for up to 15 years if they spread what Moscow deems “false information” about the invasion.

I called Dan after he arrived in Lviv on Friday. We discussed how he got out of Kyiv, where the invasion stands now, what is likely to come next, and Putin’s crackdown on the press at home.

Some highlights:

On reporting in Russia under Putin:

It’s much tougher now than it was. Even though people knew that Russia was already authoritarian, even the last 10 days, it’s taken several steps down. You know, it’s really going into massive, massive repression now. Dozens, probably, of journalists have left the country because of the effect of this war and the crackdown that is taking place to silence any — not just dissent — but any genuine, accurate, honest reporting about the war. You can now be put in jail for 15 years if you report in a way that the authorities see as inaccurate as regards to this war. You’re not allowed to call it a war in Russia. It only has to be “a special military operation.” You can’t call it an invasion. You can’t call it a war. You can’t tell Russian readers or the world that Russia is the aggressor. So it’s really terrifying. It’s not just that you won’t get your story out, you could literally go to jail and and Russian reporters are being put in jail.

On Russian propaganda about the war

It’s kind of been the message since Maidan, since the revolution in 2014. Russia said all the way that these are fascists, these are neo-Nazis, these are ultra-nationalists, Russian haters taking over power in Ukraine. It’s complete rubbish. You still walk around Kyiv and you hear as much Russian, almost, as you hear Ukrainian. So many of the people defending Ukraine with their lives now are Russian speakers. And actually, that’s their first language. The president himself, President Zelensky speaks Russian, speaks much better Russian than he speaks Ukrainian. And he’s from a Jewish family. So the the whole idea that this is some Nazi puppet state or something is just bizarre. But it is something that has been pushed by Russia for eight years now. And as we see this crackdown on free speech, independent media activists, opposition groups in Russia — which has now reached a level that is that is unprecedented since the end of the Soviet Union — it is very, very hard for ordinary Russians to get information from other sources.

On getting out of Kyiv

It was rough and it was strange because for like a couple of days I was I was juggling, Do I go? Do I stay? What should I do? I got to know the two ladies who were living in my apartment block, the only two people who were still there. We spent a bit of the previous evening together when the air raid sirens were going off. So it was a bit tough to leave. And then going out through the city, which is now completely deserted. It’s basically like a few TV crews around. It’s a few people trying to get provisions in, nipping out in between these bomb sirens and before the curfew comes in the evening. And I had to walk through the city all the way to the train station, and the train station was absolute pandemonium. The lights were switched off in the station, it was almost completely dark. There were thousands of people trying to get away from Kyiv and just horrible crush for the trains. When there’s an announcement to a train, one was to Warsaw, and that was ideal for lots of people to get straight to Poland and safety. It was a horrible crush. You got thousands of people in the near darkness. Kids getting lost. Dogs getting dragged away. Old people unable to keep up with their relatives. Just a really horrible scene. When you get down onto the street onto the platforms, a lot of the trains are already full. The doors are locked from inside because people don’t want anyone else coming on. I managed to find a train through weird luck, a modern train heading to Lviv here in western Ukraine, which was almost empty at the time. I bumped across the platform. I just had to go down onto the tracks and walk across jump up the other side and get onto the train. But I managed to find a spot in the vestibule at the end of the carriage. And then just watched it fill up like crazy.

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The post Foreign Correspondent Dan McLaughlin on Reporting From Ukraine as Putin’s War Escalates: ‘How Do You Claim to Be a Liberator of a Country You’re Annihilating?’ first appeared on Mediaite.

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