It was not even a round year. It was just an ordinary, a little shocking, 43rd birthday at the Grand Hotel in Mariupol. This evening we were just going to have dinner and go to bed, after a long day of work in the Ukrainian city on the Azov Sea.
But colleague Øystein Bogen had secretly warned the hotel employees: Aage had a birthday. After the stroganoff was put to death, they politely came up with a small piece of cake with shooting stars and good wishes. Russian artillery batteries further east would also be part of the celebration.
As I was about to put the fork in the cake, we heard it. First, remove the dump from the cannon fire. Then, after a few quiet seconds while everyone in the restaurant held their breath, roared from the grenades that struck. More shots, then shots that felt ever closer.
All that night we were kept awake by Russian artillery aiming at the Ukrainian positions near the hotel.
– BIRTHDAY CAKE: The staff at the Grand Hotel in Mariupol kept up with soft cake while Russian artillery played up against the city. Photo: Private
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– SENT: Aage Aune and Øystein Bogen have worked together for TV 2 in Eastern Europe since 2005. This photo was taken in Volgograd in Russia in 2011. Photo: Private
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It was not the first war I had covered as a photojournalist for TV 2. But it was perhaps the most frightening experience. The uncertainty of not knowing where the next grenade would hit. A creeping, horrible anxiety.
The only thing we could do was sit and listen nervously to guess if the artillery shots were approaching where we were. We knew we were not staying at a military target, but we also knew that in war there was no guarantee of accuracy. There was little sleep, even after the cannon fire stopped.
The next day we drove slowly towards the front line on the outskirts of the city. At a gas station and a few blocks of flats close to the road, we could see the result of the night’s bombing.
Large craters at the roadside and black, jagged holes for shrapnel in the buildings. A burnt-out truck was smoking in the middle of the road. This had not been a “surgical” precision attack. One woman in her 30s had been killed and four others injured.
– ARTILLIER ATTACK: A military truck is steaming and burnt out in the road outside Mariupol in September 2014. Photo: Aage Aune / TV 2
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– RUSSIAN SUPPORTED: In 2014, separatists with the support of Russian military forces started a war against Ukrainian authorities in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine. Photo: Aage Aune / TV 2
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The war in Mariupol in early September 2014 ebbed as the Ukrainian government forces finally averted the advance of the Russian-backed rebels. But the attack was not to be the last.
After the Ukrainian defeat and the subsequent bloody withdrawal from Debaltseve In February 2015, the so-called Minsk II peace agreement was negotiated between Russia and Ukraine.
The agreement was to end the hostilities and force a ceasefire. But the deal turned out to be very fragile. And in the years that followed, it laid the groundwork for a bitter trench warfare along the front lines between the breakaway areas. Donetsk and Luhansk and the rest of Ukraine.
– DEBALTSEVE: In February 2015, Ukrainian government forces lost the Battle of Debaltseve in what is now known as the Donetsk People’s Republic. Photo: Aage Aune / TV 2
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At least 13,000 Ukrainian soldiers and civilians have been killed in the conflict with Russia and nearly 30,000 injured since the war began.
The situation for the civilian population in the Donbass region is just as bleak today. Nearly four million people are trapped in the rebel areas and are almost completely cut off from government welfare schemes and infrastructure.
Every day, frail retirees have to defy snipers and minefields, and cross the front lines to be able to raise their pensions in ATMs on the Ukrainian side. The trenches divide families and prevent schooling. There is a shortage of food, water and electricity.
The war has cast long shadows over the future of an entire generation of young Ukrainians.
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THE WAR IN EUROPE: Since 2014, TV 2 has covered the annexation of the Crimean peninsula and the war in eastern Ukraine. The conflict feels distant to many, even though it still lasts and is called “Europe’s forgotten war”. Photo: Aage Aune / TV 2
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THE WAR IN EUROPE: Since 2014, TV 2 has covered the annexation of the Crimean peninsula and the war in eastern Ukraine. The conflict feels distant to many, even though it still lasts and is called “Europe’s forgotten war”. Photo: Aage Aune / TV 2
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THE WAR IN EUROPE: Since 2014, TV 2 has covered the annexation of the Crimean peninsula and the war in eastern Ukraine. The conflict feels distant to many, even though it still lasts and is called “Europe’s forgotten war”. Photo: Aage Aune / TV 2
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THE WAR IN EUROPE: Since 2014, TV 2 has covered the annexation of the Crimean peninsula and the war in eastern Ukraine. The conflict feels distant to many, even though it still lasts and is called “Europe’s forgotten war”. Photo: Aage Aune / TV 2
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THE WAR IN EUROPE: Since 2014, TV 2 has covered the annexation of the Crimean peninsula and the war in eastern Ukraine. The conflict feels distant to many, even though it still lasts and is called “Europe’s forgotten war”. Photo: Aage Aune / TV 2
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THE WAR IN EUROPE: Since 2014, TV 2 has covered the annexation of the Crimean peninsula and the war in eastern Ukraine. The conflict feels distant to many, even though it still lasts and is called “Europe’s forgotten war”. Photo: Aage Aune / TV 2
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THE WAR IN EUROPE: Since 2014, TV 2 has covered the annexation of the Crimean peninsula and the war in eastern Ukraine. The conflict feels distant to many, even though it still lasts and is called “Europe’s forgotten war”. Photo: Aage Aune / TV 2
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THE WAR IN EUROPE: Since 2014, TV 2 has covered the annexation of the Crimean peninsula and the war in eastern Ukraine. The conflict feels distant to many, even though it still lasts and is called “Europe’s forgotten war”. Photo: Aage Aune / TV 2
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THE WAR IN EUROPE: Since 2014, TV 2 has covered the annexation of the Crimean peninsula and the war in eastern Ukraine. The conflict feels distant to many, even though it still lasts and is called “Europe’s forgotten war”. Photo: Aage Aune / TV 2
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The experiences in Mariupol in 2014 were still vivid in our minds when we boarded the plane from Geneva to Kiev in January 2022. Foreign Ministers Antony Blinken and Sergei Lavrov had just met in the city of international diplomacy on the shores of Lake Geneva, to try to create a certain agreement on the new crisis in Ukraine. These conversations did not change anything. In recent weeks, several European leaders have had to return home from visits to Moscow and Kyiv, with no peace solution in their luggage.
Russia has since the fall of 2021 gathered over 100,000 troops along the eastern border with Ukraine and has moved additional forces to Belarus to threaten Ukraine from the north. Russia demands concessions and guarantees from the United States that Ukraine will not join NATO. The United States and Western Europe will not be threatened. Not Ukraine either.
According to the United States and a number of Western countries, there is a real danger of a Russian attack that will lead to great loss of life and have major consequences for security throughout Europe.
– FEAR OF WAR: In the capital of Ukraine, the inhabitants have to live with the threat of Russian invasion. Photo: Aage Aune / TV 2
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In the streets of Kiyv, the mood is strangely calm when we arrive in February 2022. Maybe it’s because people are used to living in fear of war, since the war that began in 2014 never really ended.
Sons and daughters enlist in the army and train to defend the country. The news broadcasts on TV are full of cases about the Russian force building. Russian military units are now only a four-hour drive north of the capital, just across the border from Belarus.
– EXCITED: At a memorial wall over those who have been killed in the war, someone has lit a candle. No one knows what will happen tomorrow. Photo: Aage Aune / TV 2
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There are regular hacker attacks and bomb threats against schools and public buildings. School children must practice evacuation to bomb shelters every day. Obviously people are really scared.
I feel the fear of war myself too, in the raw fog of the ancient city by the river Dnieper. The creeping fear and uncertainty of what brutality might happen in the next second is the same as during my birthday in Mariupol almost eight years ago.
TV 2 explains: Will there be a war in Europe?
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