A Year of War: A Reporter’s View of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last February, long-held assumptions about geopolitics and matters of war and peace in the twenty-first century have been upended. But the war has not gone as Vladimir Putin hoped, either. Over the first year of war, Joshua Yaffa, who spent a decade living and reporting in Russia, has traveled across Ukraine—where he also has deep experience as a journalist—witnessing the war up close. He will share his impressions from his numerous reporting trips, which have spanned the early, fraught days in Kyiv, to the grinding artillery battles in the Donbass, and the liberated territories in the Kharkiv region. What does the conflict look like for the people of Ukraine, from civilians trapped under bombardment to newly enlisted soldiers? And what do everyday Russians understand about the war and their own responsibility? What sort of end to the fighting is possible? And what kind of world will emerge in its wake?

Joshua Yaffa is a contributing writer for the New Yorker. He is also the author of Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin’s Russia, which won the Orwell Prize in 2021. For his work in Russia, he has been named a fellow at New America, a recipient of the American Academy’s Berlin Prize, and a finalist for the Livingston Award.