French War Reporter Loup Bureau on Russia’s ‘Brutal’ Ukraine Invasion: ‘It Was Total Chaos in Every City’
variety.comChristopher Vourlias Before the Russian army launched an invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, French war correspondent Loup Bureau was embedded in Donbass, the restive borderland in Eastern Ukraine, which since 2014 has been the site of an ongoing conflict between Russian-backed separatist groups and Ukrainian government forces.Reports were circulating of an impending Russian attack.
Bureau, who had already spent time in the region while shooting his feature-length documentary “Trenches” – screening next week at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival – expected it to be a localized skirmish.
But in the early hours of a full-scale assault that engulfed large parts of the country, the scope of the Russian invasion became clear.
Bureau and other foreign correspondents were on the outskirts of the strategic eastern city of Donetsk. They decided to travel to Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, some 450 miles away.
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