“This is not Putin’s war, it is the Russians’ war”: the man who hides children and shows the war

Nothing marked out this calm man to become one of the faces of the war. Azad Safarov was born in Azerbaijan. At the age of 8, he moved to Donetsk with his family to follow his father. He would stay there for 15 years, until he graduated in journalism and decided to settle in Kyiv and make his life there. His path into journalism was shaped by his mother, who saw it as a calm profession, far from any danger. Then 2014 came, the Donbas went up in flames, and the first clashes between Ukraine and Russia raged in eastern Ukraine. So he armed himself with a camera and set off to cover the first battles of his adopted country.

Alongside this life as a reporter runs another existence, quieter and more personal: with his wife, he founded a charity dedicated to the psychological support of children and parents crushed by the war: Voices of Children. “Since 2019, we have helped more than 180,000 children and adults. We have 11 centres in front-line cities such as Kharkiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia and Mykolaiv. And we dream of opening one in Odesa.”

Since 2014, his life has tipped into a double existence he has never left since: that of the war reporter and that of the humanitarian.

From Donetsk to the front: a life of reporting between risk and red tape

“It’s a matter of luck”

This man, who knows the checkpoints better than the pavements of Kyiv, has been through two schools of war journalism. The first, Ukrainian, can be summed up in one blunt sentence: “With Ukrainian channels, there is no safety at all: no bulletproof vest, no armoured car, nothing. You just get into a soldier’s car and off you go.” He depended on the goodwill of the military to move forward, to sleep, to set off again. The second, international, is safer but more bureaucratic. A world of armoured vehicles, large crews and permits. “We are infinitely safer, but infinitely slower. The war doesn’t wait for our paperwork.”

Death, however, takes no notice of protocols. Azad knows this all too well, having come so close to his last day. Once, a very threatening Russian drone began hovering above his crew, which had no anti-missile jammers. What saved them? Two soldiers watching the sky, armed with automatic rifles: “Now air defence is just two guys with AK-47s shooting at drones. It’s a matter of luck.”

Reporting “at the risk of my life”

Chief producer for Sky News in Ukraine, he has been criss-crossing the front since the start of the conflict. In 2014, Azad was among the first at the scene of the worst: the crash of flight MH17 over the Donbas — 298 dead. “We were the first on the scene the night MH17 was shot down. CNN hid us in a car boot to get us out.” For Donetsk, the city of his childhood, had fallen under Russian occupation — and there he went on working undercover, “at the risk of my life”, he says simply, his heart beating to the rhythm of the patrols.

Since then, he has never left the front. He covers everything: the occupation of his own city — Donetsk —, the liberation of Kherson — whose first day he witnessed —, the front-line positions. “I have been on the front since the beginning, in 2014. Not since 2022. I know this war and how it has evolved.”

Why risk all this? His answer comes down to one sentence that has become his conviction: “Without the reporting on Bucha, Germany would have sent us blankets, not weapons.” Bucha, Irpin: the images of the massacres and mass graves shifted Western policy, which felt more concerned once it discovered the images of the horrors committed. Journalism, he says, is not a job; it is a survival weapon for his country. Without him and his colleagues, the world’s attention fades.

Yet he is irritated by how fickle the world’s attention is: when another conflict sets the news ablaze — the stand-off between Israel and Iran, for example —, the cameras turn away from Ukraine, and international aid, vital to his country’s survival, goes with them. “The pain of Ukrainians does not disappear when it leaves your screens.”

Not a cent from Russians: a foundation, an anger, a red line

“Fuck off”

At Voices of Children, they treat children’s trauma and gather evidence of the crimes committed, but they do not accept blood money, Azad insists. One day, a Russian oligarch offered a generous donation, on one condition: that his name appear on the website. Azad Safarov’s answer is a phrase that needs no translation: “Fuck off. You will not put your name on our website. If you want to give, do it anonymously.” Even anonymously, the money was refused. The red line held.

His anger does not stop at the Kremlin. It takes in a whole people. He makes no distinction between Vladimir Putin and the Russians, and owns it. “This is not Putin’s war, it is the Russians’ war. If they didn’t support him, he would have stopped long ago.” He watches Russians flee their country without ever taking to the streets in large numbers to say no. “I will never shake hands with a Russian. Their silence made this war possible.” A rigidity he does not try to justify by anything other than pain and resentment.

The comparison with his own country comes to him at once: Ukraine, he says, rises up. Maidan in 2014, the protests against corruption, a society that takes to the streets at the risk of its life. He sums it up with disarming simplicity: “In Ukraine, if the police beat one person, 1,000 people take to the streets. In Russia, if the police beat one person, 100 people hide at home.” A reading without nuance, he admits. But a reading shaped by the ruins and the horror of war.

A war of attrition, a faith in victory, and Europe on the horizon

“We are fighting for the whole of Europe.”

At the front, Azad describes a palpable weariness, but one that is never mistaken for giving up. “We are tired, but we keep fighting. And we are fighting for the whole of Europe.” His tribute to the soldiers is unreserved: “Ukrainian soldiers are the bravest. They hold their positions for 300, 400 days. Whereas the Russians send prisoners.” Ukraine counts its men and protects them, often with paltry means. Russia turns its men into a consumable in the service of the war machine.

As for the West’s involvement, the reporter frowns. He is outraged by the voices calling for teenagers to be mobilised while arms deliveries still arrive drop by drop: “The West tells us: mobilise 16-year-olds. But where are the weapons you promised us?” Then comes the final warning, his face grave, to drive the point home: “If Ukraine falls, Putin will not stop there. This is a war for the whole of Europe.” The story of dictators is written in advance for those who read it and believe it, he adds.

How can this war end? He mentions two scenarios: a Russian economic collapse, or Putin’s death. He is also counting on the Ukrainian drones and missiles that now strike Moscow: “When the war reaches them, their cities, their minds, perhaps they will finally understand what they are putting us through.”

And Ukraine in five years? His face changes and softens: “In 5 years, I see Ukraine as a prosperous country, with foreigners coming to live and work here.” The food, the landscapes, the welcome: everything is there to make the country attractive, he says with conviction. He speaks of it as something obvious that the world will soon discover.

Joining the European Union and NATO? “Our place is in Europe. Without NATO, another Putin will come back in 30 years.” The idea of a neutral Ukraine he brushes aside: neutrality, in his view, is an invitation to the next massacre. “We already have the Ukrainian and European flags side by side in the liberated towns.” In Bucha, Irpin and the other Ukrainian towns that lived through occupation, the country’s aspiration is already visible on the town hall façades: two simple pieces of cloth flying side by side, which mean a great deal. Azad describes the young generation as English-speaking, open to the world, with an unshakeable will for a fairer, freer and sovereign future. In his eyes, they embody this irreversible move towards Europe. And then there is this scene in Kharkiv, which he recounts with a smile the war has not yet erased: “In Kharkiv, after an explosion, people order another coffee.” Five minutes after the blast, life resumes. “That’s Ukraine.”

To foreigners: “Don’t forget us”

Azad Safarov feels immense gratitude towards the international journalists — French, British, American — who risk their lives on the Ukrainian front when nothing obliges them to. “I have huge respect for the foreign journalists who come here. They could go to the Dominican Republic, but they choose to risk their lives to tell our story.” The line raises a smile, but above all it is, for him, the mark of sincere gratitude.

Among the leading figures who have helped Ukraine is Boris Johnson. “Boris Johnson is a hero here. He was the first foreign leader to come to Ukraine.” A Briton in Kyiv at the darkest moment: “you don’t forget that”, he says. As for the French president, Emmanuel Macron has travelled the opposite road: “Unlike in your country, we actually like Macron [...] At first, Macron would say: ‘I’m going to call Putin.’ Now everyone here admires him. He is one of the few who really stands up to him.”

His message to Western capitals comes down to three words: DO NOT FORGET. “This war began in 2014, not in 2022. The world’s attention wavers [...] it must never fade.” He calls for tougher sanctions against Russia, constant military support and unfailing funding. And to readers who would like to see the country with their own eyes, he extends an invitation that sounds almost incongruous in a country at war: “Ukrainians will welcome you with open arms. You will be surprised by their hospitality.”

Between front-line reporting and organising psychological support sessions for children, Azad Safarov lives two lives in one, two ways of repairing a country: filming the war, and healing those it has broken.

For twelve years now, this man has gone on telling the story of a country that is tired but still standing, fighting for its freedom and for the whole of Europe too. A country that asks only that Europe not look away when the need arises.