Sky News Correspondent in Ukraine on Kiev Bombings, Scary Uncertainty of War
variety.comManori Ravindran International EditorThe last time Variety caught up with Sky News chief correspondent Stuart Ramsay, he was hunkered down in a military compound near the Kabul airport, where thousands of Afghan civilians were awaiting evacuation as the Taliban watched on.Seven months later — after a stint in Brazil’s Amazon and a quick trip home to the U.K.
for Christmas in between — he’s coming up on two months in Ukraine. Ramsay and his producer, Dominique van Heerden, have been in Kiev for around a week, and in the last few days, it’s become much harder to get any shut-eye.“The problem is, we’re not sleeping an awful lot at night because of the bombing, so everything just becomes a bit of a blur,” says Sky’s longest-serving foreign correspondent. “It is very challenging.
The bombing is very heavy, and with bombing, it can be very indiscriminate.” The team are in a relatively quiet neighbourhood, but it’s near some “strategic military roving,” says Ramsay, meaning the area could be targeted for attacks overnight.
Until Saturday, media have been given good mobility and the Ukrainian armed forces have been “very friendly,” but there have been numerous restrictions on what can be filmed.“There are a number of people [militias] with weapons now on the streets and both they and the police — who are all armed — and the army are very, very jumpy,” says Ramsay.
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