Friends and family ofOleksandra Kuvshynova, the Ukrainian journalist killed March 14 while coveringRussia’s warwith colleagues from Fox News, describe the 24-year-old they called “Sasha” as driven, sensitive, funny and fearless.
Kuvshynova adored poetry, film, photography and electronic music, but a best friend, Edwin Novak,told Insiderin a story published Wednesday. she showed true potential for making meaningful documentaries.
“She wasn’t just someone who just did a few projects and was kind of artsy and creative and all the rest, but she had a real ability to look further,” said Novak, a filmmaker. “She felt the pain of this world. She had an extraordinary capacity to understand it.”
Working with Fox News was an important opportunity for someone with dreams of covering more than Russia’s attack on her country, Novak said.
Kuvshynova was hired as a “fixer” for Fox News. The industry term refers to someone with local knowledge who can translate, arrange access with subjects, navigate and assist international journalists in various ways once they arrive in a foreign country to cover a story.
Yonat Friling, a Fox News field producer who worked with Kuvshynova for 10 days in Ukraine, praised her dedication and willingness to do whatever was asked of her on the job. “I never heard a no from her,“she said in digital story for his network.
“She was beautiful, very funny and sometimes had a dark sense of humor, which I admire, and it really helped in a serious time,” Friling remembered. “When she stepped into a room, she lit the room with her smile, and she had beautiful eyes and she had plans. She loved everybody and she loved life.”
Zarkrzewski was also killed in the attack. Hall survived and is in the U.S.recovering from serious injuriesthat resulted in him losing a foot, part his leg and suffering eye and ear damage, he has said.
Sviatoslav Yurash, a member of Ukraine’s parliament, a friend and former boyfriend of Kuvshynova — who called her “The beauty of Kyiv” in atribute on Twitter— told Insider that he saw video of their vehicle after it was hit. “The car is utterly destroyed,” he said.
Other friends said Kuvshynova was unafraid of the dangers involved in covering Russia’s invasion of her country.
Aleksey Horbach, a media producer who saw her days before the war began, said Kuvshynova was planning to go to Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, anticipating Russia would attack there first.
“But it turned out the whole of Ukraine became a front line,” Horbach told Insider. “So she stayed in Kyiv to highlight the war.”
When he asked his friend if she really wanted to be a journalist given the risks, she told him, “Sure, because I am doing what I truly like,” he said.
Kuvshynova’s father, Andrey Kuvshinov, spoke about a close call when his young daughter disappeared from the family’s home in Kyiv, the Ukraine capital, during a period of civil unrest in 2014.
“Twenty-four hours later, we found out that our daughter — who was still a schoolgirl at the time — was at the media center, helping with her friend to translate texts,” he told Insider.
When the building where she’d been working burned down only a few hours after she’d been there, 22 people reportedly died in the blaze.
In a video message she sent to friends before she died, Kuvshynova admitted she was initially “scared” during early visits to areas under attack near Kyiv but the fear didn’t last.
“And today I went, just like that, looking around. They are shooting everywhere, something is on fire, something is flying, and I’m like: Okay,” she said in the video, which Insider transcribed after receiving it from Novak. “Maybe it’s the nice weather, I don’t know. But I’m already used to it, I no longer have fear.”
Russia’sattack on Ukrainecontinues after their forces launched a large-scale invasion on Feb. 24 — the first major land conflict in Europe in decades.
More than 4 million have fled the country as refugees — and half are children,according to the United Nations. Millions more have been displaced inside Ukraine.
With NATO forces amassed in the region, various countries are offering aid or military support to the resistance. Ukraine’s PresidentVolodymyr Zelenskyyhas called for peace talks — so far unsuccessful — while urging his country to fight back.
Putin insists Ukraine has historic ties to Russia and he is acting in the best security interests of his country. Zelenskyy vowed not to bend.
“Nobody is going to break us, we’re strong, we’re Ukrainians,“he told the European Unionin a speech in the early days of the fighting, adding, “Life will win over death. And light will win over darkness.”
source: people.com
