Photography and journalism in Ukraine: "The important thing is not to allow ourselves to become accomplices of impunity"

Álvaro Ybarra's photos and reports have been published in important media such as Time Magazine, New York Times, Le Monde, Libération, Newsweek, The Sunday Times Magazine, CNN, Vanity Fair, ABC XLSemanal, he has worked for major international agencies such as Vu and Getty Images, has published five books, has worked with NGOs and major companies on very interesting projects, has collaborated on documentaries, teaches at universities and now also runs his own audiovisual production company. 

Álvaro Ybarra came to the microphones of "De Cara al Mundo" on Onda Madrid to talk about his work, his photographs and his experience in the armed conflict in Ukraine and other parts of the world in an interview with Javier Fernández Arribas. 

I will always remember that photo. November 2008, Democratic Republic of Congo. A beast, a soldier of the Congolese Army with a knife in his mouth, and in one hand the severed hand of a soldier of the National Congress for the Defence of the People and in the other the genital organs of this soldier and a terrible look. The question I asked Álvaro Ybarra was how were you able to take this photo? From those horrifying situations so far in Ukraine, how do you rate it? 

I think that for the first time in 20 years of my career and photographing all these events that have marked the recent history of our civilisation, of the world we live in, we are somehow facing a conflict that really threatens our freedom, our way of understanding life, the way we have grown up and worked for. That threat is called Russia.  

Here the conflict has been generated only by one side. Here there is an aggressor and someone who is not only defending himself, but who is fighting to survive and not to disappear. That is the fundamental objective that Putin is seeking with this aggression against Ukraine. 

I think we have known each other for many, many years and you know that I am not exaggerating. I have never seen such barbarity, such systematic violation of human rights, such death. Neither you nor I lived through the First World War, but today travelling to Ukraine and travelling to the front lines is like being transported to that war, to those front lines of artillery and scorched earth. 

In the First World War, the factor that made that war, especially on the European fronts, a very cruel war was the use of chemical weapons.  

If we understand phosphorus as a chemical weapon, it is our daily bread. Putin does not need to use a tactical nuclear bomb, because the consequences of using such a weapon will bring him absolutely nothing. However, he is going to propose a radical change in the pressure on Russia, i.e. to use a tactical nuclear bomb, he would first blow up the nuclear power plant in Zaporiyia, which can, has the capacity and controls it. That is a fact. It is a real possibility that is on the table and is one of the means that can put Putin on the ropes, which he already is. Now it remains to be seen how far he is willing to go. 

And then, any front line is a return, as I say, to the First World War. It's a war in which the number of casualties is very high, although there are not really official figures, but we are talking about figures very close to the level of the First World War from what many, many experts in the field are saying. I've seen it with my own eyes, how they come out of the trench like when you see a film about that war. 

The whole of what is called the Bajmut arc, I've seen waves and waves and waves of Russian soldiers coming out and being machine-gunned. Then the artillery is on top of you and again and again all the time. It's an artillery war, it's a war that is using technology from the 1950s, the 1960s and at most the 1990s. That's why there is so much destruction. It is not a modern war. In fact, there was no ammunition. Most of the ammunition being used in this conflict is obsolete ammunition. 

I was criticised on social media because I said that Russian armoured vehicles and tanks were junk, especially the ones that were sent to Ukraine at the beginning, T-64, T-72. Perhaps the most novel thing about the conflict in Ukraine from a military point of view is the role that drones are playing right now in the strategies of both sides. But the Russian communications system - and this is something that military experts have reported on live here - has been left behind because it was so primitive. The fact that 16 Russian army generals were killed in the front line is relevant. And the fact that they were also going to try to boost the morale of soldiers who were being cheated. 

Yes, it is surprising. Moreover, there is now talk of a counteroffensive that hides behind it a change of tactics, i.e. what the allies and all the Western countries that are supporting Ukraine do not want is to continue fighting a conflict according to the rules that Putin has put on the table.  

We are talking about an old strategy, a strategy in which technology plays hardly any role at all. All the weapons that are arriving now are for a complete change of strategy, for rapid troop movements, breaking the rules and making it a much more self-interested and contemporary war.  

Russia has big problems. The first is that the Ukrainians are destroying them, firstly, with the lines of communications and logistics with the HIMARS system, which has marked a turning point in the conflict. On the other hand, the lack of training, because they have no trained soldiers. In the first wave the number of casualties was savage. And then the loss of weapons, tanks and armoured vehicles, in other words, it's going to take Russia a long time to recover. So right now the big counteroffensive that is being talked about I think it is going to cause big surprises on the ground because they are trying to change the way of fighting and leave behind the war of positions as we are seeing in the Donbas or as we saw during the first months also on the southern front, on the Kherson front. 

Are we being able to tell the story of the war or are we telling what we are allowed to tell? On the Russian side, the ones I know who are there are their own media, Russia Today, to make their own propaganda, but on the Ukrainian side I think they are managing the presence of the international media that had kicked us out of the last big war in Syria. The Daesh terrorists, with their kidnappings and murders, had driven out international journalists and photographers and we had to work with Syrian journalists, who were risking their lives to be able to report. But now there is a significant deployment of Western media on the ground in Ukraine and he tells me that yes, they are managing the information well, but controlling it. 

In terms of photography, what I am very happy to see is that the more in-depth work, which really reflects and explains what is happening on the ground, is being produced by Ukrainian photographers. It is impressive the work they are doing. In the end, we are foreigners and simply guests on the ground. 

It is true that I have been covering the conflict in Ukraine since 2014, but it is a very complex conflict and difficult to understand. The first barrier you have is simply language. But yes, I think the access is being unique.  Obviously with the limitations of black-out operations that have always existed on the ground. The work has been, to say the least, relatively easy within the complexity of any armed conflict. 

And when it comes to contrast. I also gave as an example the coverage we were able to do in the Bosnian war, where you got the news: "in a village in central Bosnia there are 14 women raped and murdered". You had two options: believe it and tell the story or take the car - which is what we did - and go to central Bosnia, get to the village and there were, again, two options. One, that it was a lie, so the trip was useless. Two, that unfortunately 80% of the time it was true, and you could tell about it. To what extent can we now check the information that comes to us from the contenders? I insist, information is just another weapon for them, especially when President Zelenski needs Western public opinion to continue to show the support of Western governments in sending arms and money to support Ukraine. 

It is true that it is difficult to reach certain areas. I think there is a lot of news today focused on Bakhmut. Just 100 kilometres away, a little further north, there is another city called Siversk, to call it a city.  

Siversk has a very similar context to Bakhmut and is not in the news. And in Bakhmut you have a lot of news on the whole front line. There is also Marinka, which is another point on the contact line in front of the Donbas.  

Getting there is complex. One of the big problems you have is, as I imagine would also happen in Bosnia, you can pass a check point and the next one, but you're talking about front lines that are quite volatile and you can get into very complex situations that you don't want to be in. It's complex to get to these regions, you get there, you have freedom once you get there, but it's not only that. It's a war in which artillery is setting the tempo of the conflict and artillery is falling all over the place. Here you don't have so much a sniper conflict, but more of an artillery conflict, lots and lots of mines, scorched earth. In any of these places you can find yourself in a context where you might be in occupied territory instead of Ukrainian territory without realising it. 

In your 20 years of experience you have travelled all over the world. We used to talk about the Congo, but Ukraine is now shutting down or hiding very serious situations. For example, we haven't talked about Venezuela, Cuba or Colombia for a long time. Should we also keep some space to talk about what is happening in those countries? 

I think so. In the end we cannot forget that we are talking about Ukraine, but we could be talking almost about a Cold War-like confrontation in which the chessboard is Ukraine. I wouldn't go so far as to call it World War III, but we are not very far from it and it is understandable that it has dominated the entire news spectrum.  

But we are also witnessing the barbarities that are happening today in Sudan, which have been totally forgotten by Ukraine. We can talk about the Venezuelan context, the Colombian context, Somalia, which is currently in an apocalyptic humanitarian crisis, and other regions of the world that have been somewhat forgotten. Also the drama of refugees and immigration. 

These are issues that you have also photographed. I recommend going to alvaroybarra.com and there you have a good part of those 20 years of work in different parts of the world that offer a reflection.  

I think that in the end the photographer is not the important thing. What is important is to leave a record of something that happens in front of you and that is part of history. We are witnesses to what we witness and we are not important. What is important is not to allow ourselves to become complicit in impunity. 

I think in Ukraine the importance of being on the ground in a time when we are not going to talk about whether it is fake news or not is being re-emphasised; I think we are moving towards a world where we have to ask ourselves is it real or is it not real, because we live in a risk where artificial intelligence can simulate moments in history that did not exist. And that is hijacking the legacy for the next generations to know where we came from.  

Ukraine is demonstrating the importance of photographing, of being present, so that the human or humanoid can leave for the next generations our history. Imagine growing up without the constancy of having lived through two world wars, the Jewish genocide or the different industrial revolutions. We are moving towards a world in which we no longer talk about fake news, but we are going to start asking ourselves what existed and what did not exist, and that is a very dangerous weapon in a world that is increasingly full of autocrats and populism. 

I think Ukraine is demonstrating the importance of being and having direct witnesses to cases like Bucha, Izium and the barbarities that have been committed by Russian troops during the invasion. 

We are talking about this artificial intelligence in conflicts, but on a day-to-day basis, in election campaigns, we can find more or less fabricated news. I think that right now the commitment of information professionals is much greater because society needs to have the best information in the face of possible deception, manipulation, propaganda that has existed all our lives, but perhaps now with social networks it is much more widespread. 

Listeners will have heard in recent weeks several reports in various media about a hug between Yolanda Díaz and Pablo Iglesias or a photo of Feijoo having a drink with Sánchez. They were very well done, and because you were in context, but otherwise they'll get away with it. I'm just saying to think for a moment what that means, how tempting it is to construct a story that remains for the next generations of circumstances that didn't exist. That's a real risk.