I’m writing this from Ukraine, where I’m currently embedded and working on a number of stories. Before I left, I sat down with one of the most important voices covering this war, and I’m proud to share that conversation now as a special feature for the Meidas+ Substack.
I spoke with James Verini, the award-winning journalist and author of The Theater: Courage and Survival in the Defining Atrocity of the Ukraine War, which came out just last week. The book chronicles the bombing of the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theatre in March 2022 — the single worst act of mass civilian killing of the war — where hundreds of civilians had taken shelter. Written in large letters on the pavement outside was the word дети — “Diti” — children. The Russian pilot who bombed the theater undoubtedly saw it.
Verini has reported from conflict zones across Iraq, Afghanistan, and Ukraine, and he opens up here about the emotional and ethical weight of this kind of journalism — how you sit with survivors, earn their trust, and ask the hardest questions without doing further harm. He discusses the impossible tension between a reporter’s obligation to tell the truth and a human being’s obligation not to retraumatize the people whose stories you’re telling. His answer is both honest and humbling.
This is one of the most important conversations I’ve had about the Ukraine war — and one of the most hopeful. Verini’s book is proof that even in the middle of history’s worst moments, human beings find ways to take care of each other.
Buy the book here.
