CNN Brasil reporter returns to the country and reports coverage of the war in Ukraine

After following more than a month of the war in Ukraine directly from Eastern Europe, the reporter for CNN Brasil Mathias Brotero returned to the country and recounts the days he lived in the midst of the clashes.

Recalling the experience, Brotero highlights the unpredictability of coverage of an armed confrontation. “Things are happening, we are dealing with changes on a daily basis, constantly. Even talking about sirens, for example. Sirens go off, we’re in the middle of an agenda, we have to run to some shelter.”

The correspondent was in Kiev the day Russian President Vladimir Putin authorized what he calls a “special military operation” on Ukrainian territory.

“We knew this could happen, but no one imagined it could get to Kiev so soon,” Brotero said.

According to him, “on the first day, in fact, people didn’t really know what to do, so it was a rush, a lot of people trying to find a bunker in the subway, people trying to get a suitcase to leave Kiev as soon as possible. But from the next day onwards it was something that people realized it wasn’t going to be that fast”.

In addition to Ukraine, the reporter for CNN Brazil spent a few days in Poland, following the migration crisis generated by the flight of millions of refugees. According to data from the United Nations (UN), more than 4 million people have left the country since the beginning of the war.

“Refugees have no idea when they will return and the concern is with the people they left behind, a life they left behind, who don’t know if they will be able to return to that life now”, says Brotero.

It was in an interview with a refugee that Mathias lived one of the highlights of the coverage: the account of a man who fled the city where he lived after having lost his mother in the bombing of a supermarket.

“It is very tragic to know that those who are on the edge continue to die, continue to be wounded.”