What’s Happening in the Ukrainian War? Interview with Reece Lynch
The war in Ukraine is a really fascinating and convoluted situation that doesn’t get much coverage, yet whose result could have huge effects on modern EU-Russia relations. I reached out to Reece Lynch to find out more. Reece Lynch has been reporting on the situation in Ukraine on Youtube since 2019. He is currently working on a documentary about the war there.
Who are you and what do you do?
My name is Reece Lynch, I’m a documentary film-maker, and at the start of 2019 I drove my car to Ukraine to find out about the war there. There wasn’t a whole lot of information coming out, specifically in English, and the whole region seemed to have gone dark; I wasn’t really sure what was happening. I’d been following the war since 2014, so I just kind of decided I wanted to explore for myself. I drove over there, and when I got there I found this incredible story, so I ended up staying there for a year to film what was happening on the Ukrainian frontline.
Were there any other reasons you chose to do this?
Well I’ve always wanted to move into documentaries and I’ve always followed conflicts and wars – it’s been a big passion of mine. There are so many under-reported places, partly because the media only focuses on what others are focusing on. I think it’s really unfair and I wanted to give some voice and exposure to other places. Ukraine was a natural starting point for me because I’d lived with Ukrainian people in the past, in 2014 when the war broke out. I knew a lot about the conflict, I’d been following it and I was still speaking to the Ukrainians. It seemed to be an area where, since 2015, the news cycle had just dropped off. That’s why I chose Ukraine.
So how did the war start?
The war started in 2014, when Yanukovych was the president. He was much more Russian-leaning, whereas the general populace was much more European-leaning. He pushed through a series of laws forming closer ties with Russia, which didn’t go down well at all with the EU-leaning population. Over a series of a few months a revolution called “Maidan” took place which eventually saw him removed from power and Poroshenko put into place. This was against Russia’s wishes. The majority of Ukraine is Europe-leaning but there are a few people in the east who aren’t: Russia really capitalised on this, first of all by taking Crimea, which is the southern part of Ukraine. It’s a little peninsula and has access to the Black Sea. There were Ukrainian bases there, but there was also a Russian base. Russia annexed it, in an illegal referendum which only they recognise. On top of that, Russia began fuelling, arming and funding rebels in the east. Very soon after that, the Russians began providing their own troops and irregulars to help boost the rebels’ numbers and make them seem much larger than they actually were. As a result, all that spiralled into what people would call a civil war, but it isn’t really, because it’s directly funded and fought by an external country. It’s almost like a silent war between the two countries. That’s all a direct result of this revolution which happened in 2014.
What’s your view on the current status quo?
Well it’s just trench warfare at the moment. It reached its height in 2015: that’s when thousands upon thousands of people died, but it’s also when they were able to get some ceasefires into effect. This reduced the amount of fighting, but not as much as they had hoped. Until I went out there myself I had no idea just how active the war was. There are currently two sides in hundreds of miles of trenches they dug out. It’s a really well established trench network, and they’re basically just trying to pick each other off. They use snipers, mortars, SPGs, RPGs, all of that light weaponry; while at the same time both sides claim to be sticking to the ceasefire. They say they are only firing in retaliation to the other side. From my year there I saw that these ceasefires just aren’t holding, and disengaged areas are re-engaged in a matter of weeks. That seems to be the current state of it. Now it did seem to me that the majority of the time it was the Russian-backed side breaking the ceasefire first. I wouldn’t say that’s true 100% of the time, but it’s certainly the majority of what I was seeing. Then obviously the Ukrainian side would reply to that and it just spirals from there. Unfortunately even that show-off behaviour, without any intention to capture land, is still causing casualties on both sides. That’s pretty much what the situation is, just a long slog. The days of massive territory changes are probably behind us for now. At the moment it’s endless trench warfare.
Has Zelensky taking power in Ukraine affected this at all?
Yeah, he’s had quite an influence. He was elected in early 2019, when I got there. The platform he got elected on was to end the war. He was really adamant that he would end the war, that it had dragged on for too long. I think this was, and still is, an incredibly popular idea; but the terms on which he can do that are not popular. The reality – which I think he’s realised since – is that he doesn’t really have the power to end the war. Ukraine could only end the war by recognising these republics that have sprung up, and allowing a large chunk of their country to disappear, but the people don’t want that. They were really resolute that that shouldn’t happen. He won’t be able to get peace unless he gets the Ukrainian people to accept this, and there’s no way that’s happening: they were so insistent that that should be the case, so I think he’s bitten off a bit more than he can chew. I think he’s realising that Putin is the one with the keys and the power to end this war. Zelensky can’t do anything except try and get some disengagements. He did successfully do that in 2019, with 3 disengagement sites. That was a massive struggle because local militias, far-right kind of people, didn’t want their troops to retreat from Ukraine as they saw it. He managed to get these 3 sites and I remember just how much hard work that was, but in the months that followed even these dis-engagements haven’t stuck. Even the small, localised peace he’s trying to get isn’t working, so I think he’s really going to struggle going forwards. It’ll be interesting to see his re-election campaign because so much of his election victory was about ending the war. The fact that he’s made so little progress on that might have some interesting knock-on effects.
That’s interesting because it seemed like his election was a bit of a joke, with people voting for him ironically after he starred in “Servant of the People”.
I wouldn’t say it was a joke, I mean he was certainly popular. I think the whole idea of the TV show, which I haven’t watched to be honest, was that a regular person sweeps in and takes power. I think the Ukrainians like that idea because they’ve always been ruled by military leaders or massive businessmen, they haven’t had that success story of a regular person coming in to do that. I kind of get the idea, but he wasn’t a regular person, he was already a famous actor, so it isn’t like he was picked off the streets the way he is in the show. He was technically already part of the elite. On the other hand I think he has done a lot of good for Ukraine, besides the ceasefires. He’s really brought down massive amounts of corruption, he’s managed to crack down on Russian propaganda, and to get the Russian state’s influence out of the country; but in the eyes of a lot of Ukrainians, particularly in the east, he hasn’t been hard enough on Russia . Partly because he’s had to tread a fine line between being tough on Russia but not so tough that Russia would take military action. I really don’t envy his position
So how do external politics affect the situation in Ukraine, and particularly Ukraine’s relationship with Russia?
In terms of the relationship with Russia, Ukraine is in control of that: they decide how close they want to be, and how they want to react to Russia. As you can guess, at the moment close ties with Russia aren’t favourable. They’re making huge efforts to remove Russian language, history and statues from their country. On the other hand, Ukraine has to get the support of its allies, which made the Trump administration a difficult time for Ukraine I’d say, and especially an uncertain one. That was true for the rest of the world too, since nobody knew what Trump would do next. It’s hard to have any foreign policy when your ally is constantly changing his mind with a tweet, you can’t rely on help coming. And then there was the fact that Ukraine got caught up in a massive American scandal, which wasn’t really their fault, where dodgy business between Trump and potentially Biden was happening. So suddenly every American was reading about Ukraine: there was an impeachment due to Ukraine, and it brought them into centre-stage but for the wrong reasons. That didn’t help Ukraine at all, but I think there’s more hope now that Biden has come in, because Biden has quite a close connection to Ukraine. His son was a massive influence there and spent a lot of time there. So that’s a sort of direct connection to the president. Biden has already signalled that he’ll be a bit firmer with Putin, which Trump wasn’t. Biden and Putin have already met, and Ukraine was discussed during the NATO summit. That wasn’t even something Trump would have considered. Trump was even saying that NATO was useless. I think it is going in the right direction: Ukraine’s navy is getting a bit of a boost thanks to fresh sales of American ships, but at the same time the US doesn’t want to build a massive military presence in Ukraine because that would only escalate things. It’s a delicate dance.
What just happened, with the Russians shooting at a British ship?
Well it’s interesting you bring that up, because nobody except those involved knows what happened. If you read the Russian account, they shot at the British ship; but the British just say the Russians dropped bombs in the path of the ship, but at such a distance that it didn’t really affect them. It’s another case where there are two versions of what happened. There are many such cases in this conflict. I wouldn’t look too much into it: this has been an incident waiting to happen for at least a year. The British have had a destroyer in the Black Sea for well over a year, and it’s been regularly running into Russian forces. This is definitely the highest calibre engagement to date, but such events aren’t at all uncommon. There have been a lot of close calls with Russian jets flying over. They just keep harassing each other. Britain likes to show its recognition of Ukrainian sovereignty over Crimea by sailing in Crimean waters, and Russia responds to that by defending what it sees as its waters. This seems to be a little bit more of an escalation, but this kind of thing isn’t uncommon, so it isn’t something I’d be massively worried about. It’s just that this one got caught in the news cycle and everyone jumped in to report on it, which really blew it out of proportion.
Do you think this will have any consequences or just blow over?
I think this specific incident will blow over, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened again, especially because there’s no more clear communication between NATO forces and Russia. We used to have hotlines set up to inform each other of our movements and avoid incidents like this, but under Trump a lot of that was shut down, which isn’t ideal. So there’s definitely scope for another such incident to reoccur. All it will take is some damage or a casualty in one of these engagements and it will escalate. A bit like when Ukraine lost 3 patrol boats in a similar way: it started as a small skirmish but then it escalated, then you’ve got an actual fight on your hands and the drums of war start beating again. So I would keep an eye on such incidents because if this kind of escalation did happen it would be very worrying, though not entirely unexpected.
Does this tie in at all with the recent build-up of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border?
It does, yeah. It’s a flex of Putin’s muscle – that’s what he did on the border and it’s what he’s doing in the Black Sea. For example, he’s basically closed off a lot of the international waters around Crimea to military vessels, which Russia doesn’t actually have any jurisdiction to do. I talked about this in one of my videos. Nobody recognises the annexation of Crimea, but Russia did this anyway. It happened shortly after the troop build-up to try and provoke people. Their Black Sea “blockade” has really affected Ukraine, and blocked off a lot of trade. They’re really trying to show dominance all along the Ukrainian coast, and as long as this space is closed off, which is meant to last until November if I’m not mistaken, incidents like this will keep happening, which is precisely what Putin wants, really. He wants to show the world that Russia is still as powerful as he perceives it to be.
Do incidents like this affect the Ukrainian people at all?
Yeah, definitely. Especially the Russian build-up, because it’s really hard to live in a situation where you could be invaded at any moment. They’ve seen the destruction in Donbas, they know what hardship the war has brought to their country, and still is bringing to their country. Even people I know living in Kiev were terrified. Some of them called me asking “Is Russia going to come? I’m so scared!” Nobody likes the idea of tanks arriving at your doorstep. Just that mental fear and stress is really hard. We don’t really know that in western Europe: nobody is ever expecting an invading army to show up. In Ukraine they still have that fear and it’s such a shame. I think it really holds you back from unleashing your best potential, living your best life. It really takes up a lot of mental space. Just having a war in your country, not even at the doorstep, really has an effect nation-wide: you get used to seeing military trucks and seeing people called up, you get used to seeing images of the war in the news. Having an entire generation constantly exposed to this stuff we never have to deal with in western Europe is probably having a big effect on the nation.
So how is the war affecting people living in warzones or near the frontline?
Well there are frequent blackouts, it’s hard to find water, it’s hard to get food, a lot of the villages are or are nearly abandoned, no infrastructure is intact and all the while you’ve got mortars, drones and SPGs firing in the background. It’s incredibly difficult. They get a bit used to it, some of them are forgetting life before that, but they’re all united in wanting the war to end. People could just be sitting and eating dinner when a shell comes through the roof. It really isn’t a good way to live. Even if it isn’t as bad as in 2015, it is still affecting their quality of life. A lot of them have got friends or family on the other side. A lot of the Donbas civilians are just as caught up in this as the Ukrainian civilians are – they want the border to open and a kind of return to normal.
And what about the Crimeans, what’s life like for them?
That’s a really good question, and one I’m not very confident in answering if I’m completely honest. It’s incredibly difficult to get information coming out of Crimea, especially from a reliable source. Russia has extremely strict entry conditions for who can enter and leave Crimea. I certainly couldn’t go. Whenever I talk to people online who claim to have lived in Crimea, it’s almost impossible to verify if they actually are from Crimea or just say they are. There is a lot of evidence that Russia has been sending lots of Russian citizens to Crimea to really water down the Ukrainian and Tartar population and make it much more Russian-leaning. As a result it’s incredibly difficult to get information, and what information you can get you can’t trust or verify for yourself. At this stage it’s anyone’s guess what the reality there is like. I’m sure there is no unified reality there anymore anyway. You’ve got all the hundreds of thousands of Russians who are probably enjoying it and the Ukrainian supporters who are probably forced to stay silent. You’ll never really get the full story.
Where do you think the whole situation will go from here?
For the most part, I think it’s exactly where Putin wants it. He doesn’t want to push into Ukraine, I wasn’t a big believer that there was going to be a massive invasion of Ukraine, I don’t think he has much to gain from that: I talked about this in another video. Ukraine isn’t very resource-rich, especially compared to Russia, and a full invasion would invoke a massive reaction from the rest of the world. It wouldn’t be worth the effort. As it is he’s put Ukraine in a situation where it can’t progress, it can’t join NATO since they don’t accept anyone with an ongoing war in their country. It would really struggle to join the EU for similar reasons. That’s Putin’s policy: he de-stabilises these countries, and starts a cold war with them. He can’t stop them leaving the “Russian Empire” as he sees it, but he can stop them from going anywhere else. He’s doing the exact same thing in Georgia and Moldova, which still has Russian troops in it. It’s a very well thought-out policy that the West hasn’t figured out how to counter yet. They haven’t adapted any of their organisation to counter it. I could see this “cold” war going on indefinitely unless Ukraine decides to go on the offensive and retake this territory. I can’t see that happening due to the current geopolitical situation and the fact that they would be risking all-out war with Russia. Even if Russia loses influence in the region, they can’t lose military dominance, because the West won’t let Ukraine join NATO. Biden says he discussed it with Putin, but it’s still a long way away. Russia is trying to not feel “boxed in”: I say that in quotations because obviously Russia is so big you couldn’t box it in even if you tried. So I think Russia will keep this instability and this cold war to prevent Ukraine going in the direction Ukrainians overwhelmingly want it to.
Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Yeah, I’ll just do a quick plug for my documentary. I spent just over a year living there, mostly in the trenches, I followed the stories of the soldiers, their opinions and the ceasefires, the disengagements. I’ve made a really cool documentary about that coming out in the next few months hopefully. I’ve got an editor hard at work on that. I’ll send you a link to that because it would be really cool if you could see it. It covers a lot of what we just talked about. It really brings an updated narrative of what’s happening on the Ukrainian frontline, how it affects Ukraine, Russia and the rest of the world. It also makes you realise what it’s actually like, most people don’t understand the scope of trench warfare until they see it, how active and surreal the frontline really is. People just don’t realise that there is ongoing, active, trench warfare in Europe. I’m hoping to answer some of people’s questions with this documentary.
How were you able to go into the trenches to make that documentary?
Well I got accredited. They have a press office just like any military would, and when I arrived there I badgered them for quite a few weeks until they cleared me to go in. I had to have a press officer and a few translators, but we were able to spend a hell of a lot of time in the trenches, living the life there and talking to the soldiers, getting a sense of what the reality was. There was a lot of back and forth and a lot of paperwork involved, Ukrainians love their paperwork!
Was it very dangerous for you to go into the trenches like that?
Yeah, there were a few close calls. I never told my parents just how close some of them were, but you can’t be so naïve to think that work is going to be completely safe. I was surprised by just how active and kinetic the warfare was there. I knew I would probably see a few sporadic firefights, but I didn’t expect to see it to the level of what we saw, and it is still ongoing. All of this is in complete disregard for the ceasefire. The ceasefire isn’t just regularly broken: it barely exists.
Did you have any previous journalism experience before this, or did you just rock up onto the frontline?
Well I’d worked in film, so it wasn’t quite journalistic. I’d worked on a few, mostly commercial and feature films, but I’d done a couple of documentaries, so it wasn’t completely new to me, but this was the first time I’d taken on a lead presenting role in it. I actually found that that’s what I enjoyed the most. I’d quite happily leave the camerawork and the directing behind just to focus on the story side of it. I love talking to people and connecting the dots. I really found my calling with that. It was a bit of an adventure, but I think I pulled it off and managed to get a decent story out of it.
Thanks a lot to Reece Lynch for letting me interview him and use his photos! You can check out his published videos and documentaries on his Youtube Channel here:
You can check out his website, where he sells merch and also puts his work up, here:
When his documentary comes out you should be able to find it in those places.
Love it, Max! Super informative.