Olga Rudenko heard the first explosions in Kyiv in the early hours of February 24, 2022 and thought “today is the day I die”.
Editor-in-chief of the Kyiv Independent, at that point a three-month-old start-up news website, now heralded the world over for its reporting of the conflict, she and her team had just pressed publish on the announcement Russia had declared war on her country.
The use of the word “war” was deliberate against Putin’s manicured “special military operation”. Yet war up close, above your head, is something else. The seasoned journalist panicked.
