I missed my chance to have a beer with Valerii Garmash last fall, when he was in the U.S. talking with members of the media about what he and his colleagues had been through since Russia’s attempted invasion began last February. I had been on vacation.
That was one of the many ways in which talking with the editor of the Ukrainian news outlet Maye Sense provides a healthy reminder that the challenges facing the average American newsroom chief utterly pale in comparison to what Garmash and his colleagues are up against. When we spoke late last month, just two days after President Joe Biden’s visit to Kiev, I had a nasty cold; Garmash said he had just gotten over the same crud during a quick business trip — it was everywhere.
Regular readers of this column might recall that the Times Union’s association with Maye Sense, which runs 6262.com.ua, began near the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, when the online news site served the people of Slavyansk in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.Â
Slavyansk had been near the center of Russia’s earlier proxy attempt to take over eastern Ukraine through its support of separatist forces. After the 2022 invasion, it once again became disputed territory, especially during last fall’s fiercest fighting in the Donetsk. Right now, the hot spot is just east of Slavyansk in Bakhmut. The two cities are about as far apart as Albany and Glens Falls.
Garmash moved his base of operations to the relative safety of Chernivtsi in western Ukraine in the early months of the invasion, while maintaining a string of reporters in his hometown. He was back in Slavyansk most recently in December, and was pleased to see that his office and home were still largely intact. The sound of artillery could still be heard — but that’s “kind of a regular situation” across much of Ukraine these days, he said.
Here’s how he describes a day in the…
Read the full article here