Clive Myrie has revealed in Ukraine on the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion is ‘surreal’.
The 58-year-old journalist and broadcaster, who was reporting for BBC News from the top of a hotel in the Ukrainian city of Kyiv when the conflict broke out on February 24, 2022, has stated he doesn’t think ‘nobody expected it to endure this long’.
‘It’s rather odd to be back here a year after the invasion, since I don’t believe anyone expected it to endure this long,’ he told the PA news agency after returning to the war-torn country.
‘Certainly Vladimir Putin didn’t, he thought it would be over in a week, and it clearly isn’t, it’s about to enter its second year.
‘The determination that I saw in the the eyes sometimes, in the actions, in the voices of ordinary Ukrainians a year ago, that has not diminished, if anything, it’s got more resolute.
‘And there is a real determination here that the Russian invading army will be repelled, and ordinary Ukrainians can go back to living their lives the way that they did [before the war].’
Myrie and the BBC’s top international reporter Lyse Doucet were in Kyiv last year when their story was interrupted by a warning siren.
‘You’re asking, what precisely was in Vladimir Putin’s mind when he authorised this invasion,’ he continued, reflecting on his part in reporting on the conflict in its early days.
‘You always try to rationalise these kinds of things, as a journalist and as a human being, to try to understand, what is this all about? Why is it happening?’
Myrie contended that “there was no evidence that Putin had done his research, that he knew the Ukrainian people” or the country as a whole.
Myrie also told PA that what he has learnt about Ukrainian people, many of whom have been displaced and become refugees since the outbreak of war, ‘really isn’t rocket science’.
‘I know that they’re strong, and I know that they believe that they have a right to exist and that’s what they’re fighting for. That’s what I’ve learned,’ he said. ‘For a country to try to defend itself, and if a country is defending itself, it clearly has made up its mind that it’s not going to become part of the sphere of influence of some greater power.
‘Because they have their own culture and they have their own sense of self. That’s what I’ve learned. That’s what everyone has learned throughout this war. And, interestingly, it’s what the Russian people have learned and it’s what Vladimir Putin has learned.
‘And actually, frankly, what I’ve learned doesn’t really matter. It’s what Putin has learned and he understands that he’s trying to take on people who believe that they have a right to exist.
‘And that’s the right of all people, with a culture and customs and a sense of who they are – proud people and a nation that wants to live life the way it wants to live it, not at the behest of anybody else.’