As the third anniversary of the Russian military attack on Ukraine approaches, we spoke to Dr Valentin Areh, an experienced journalist, war correspondent and Head of the Faculty of Media and Journalism at the School of Advanced Social Studies (FUDŠ).
Valentin, since we know each other from the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana, from the History Department, I am going to use informal pronouns. I remember how enthusiastically you used to describe your war-reporting experiences in the corridors of the Faculty at the beginning of the 1990s. At that time, you were mainly reporting from the Balkan wars for the Slovenian newspaper “Slovenec” (“Slovenian”), as well as the magazines “Obramba” (“Defence”) and “Mag” …
During my student years, from 1991 to 1995, I covered the war in Croatia and then Bosnia and Herzegovina as a war correspondent. Igor Vučič, an excellent cameraman for Italian television, and I were the only Slovenian journalists who were on the battlefields for many months at a time. Vučič was the author of many of the most watched scenes of destruction in Sarajevo, which were published by the world’s biggest television stations. We occasionally met other, but rare, Slovenian war correspondents: Marjan Jerman, Ivo Štandeker and the photographer Alojz Krivograd – Futy. The last two were unfortunately killed in Bosnia in 1992. Both wars have forever linked me with Vučič and Jerman – and also permanently marked me.
What was it that drew you into war correspondence? Was it the smell of gunpowder, the adrenaline rush, or the desire to present to readers, listeners or viewers what was happening in a crisis, war zone?
It is a desire to report on people who are helpless and suffering and dying because of war. To report on the cruel nature of war, which every soldier wants only to survive.
Even then, it was known that you were reporting practically directly from the front. If I remember correctly, mainly from the Croatian side.
I always wanted to be where people were dying. There were powerful stories there. Most of the time, we foreign journalists were really reporting from the Croatian or Bosnian side, because the Serbs would not let us into the territories under their control. Nevertheless, we occasionally, but rarely, managed to get on the Serbian side, too.
Well, the war correspondent’s path took you to Israel in 1996, to Iraq two years later; in the years 1998 and 1999, you were following the war in Kosovo, and in the year 2000, you were already in Chechnya.
In Kosovo, as a war correspondent for the television station POP TV, I was arrested, interrogated and threatened with liquidation. I have to thank Tomaž Perovič, the then-Director of the POP TV news programme. At his request, Jelko Kacin or members of the Slovenian Intelligence and Security Agency (SOVA) allegedly intervened with the Serbian authorities to get me released. The war in Chechnya in 2000 was also terrible. The Russians deliberately bombed hospitals, civilian settlements, and killed thousands of people. We, foreign journalists, were also threatened by Islamic extremists who were in the individual units of the Chechen rebels. Some foreigners were kidnapped, ransomed and killed. Among them was also the Reuters cameraman Adam Tepsurgayev.
Then came the 11th of September 2001 – also known as 9/11, the terrorist attack on the USA, and a month later, you were in Afghanistan, and you wrote a book about it, entitled “Afghanistan – A War Correspondent’s Tales” (Afganistan – Zgodbe vojnega dopisnika”).
In Afghanistan, together with my colleague Simon Pavlin, I worked for POP TV, Associated Press, Discovery Channel and Italia Uno. There were no other Slovenian journalists there. Vlasta Jeseničnik, a correspondent for RTV Slovenia, withdrew from Afghanistan before the war started. We managed to film the fighting with the Taliban outside Kabul, which was then broadcast on all the world’s television stations.
Let’s now skip two decades and focus on the Russian military attack on Ukraine. You went straight from your post as director of Television Slovenia to the battlefield in Ukraine. Of the 2,200 employees of the national media outlet, Radio-Television Slovenia (RTVS), was there no one else?
The journalists in Ljubljana resisted reporting from Ukraine. Most of them were busy fighting a political battle for the so-called depoliticisation of RTV. The head of the trade union, Helena Milinkovič, even demanded that every RTV journalist in Ukraine should have an armoured vehicle and special security guards. When I explained this to my colleagues in Ukraine, we all laughed to tears.
You were reporting for TV Slovenia directly from the frontline around Kyiv, in the eastern part of Ukraine.
In March 2022, together with Igor Vučič and Sandro Dokič, cameramen from TV Koper, I went to the front line in Kyiv. At that time, after fierce fighting, the Ukrainians stopped the Russian elite troops just outside the capital, which was threatened with encirclement. Later, I also covered the battle lines at Kharkiv, Bakhmut, Toretsk and Zaporizhzhia. I find it strange that in the three years of the war, there has not been a single other Slovenian journalist reporting from the front battle lines in Ukraine.
Was there anything that particularly surprised you in Ukraine, given your previous experiences in war zones?
The number of killed and wounded, the total destruction of cities larger than our capital Ljubljana, and the strength of the air, rocket and artillery attacks. I witnessed such intense artillery bombardment that, for the first time in my life, I doubted for a moment that I would return home alive. It is also shocking to see the soldiers severely affected by the psychological consequences of the war.
When you were reporting from Ukraine, you were the target of insults and lies spread by political activists on RTV through their media.
They lied that I had not even been to Ukraine and that the RTV management had even admitted that I had faked the footage. These are despicable lies by some journalists of the TV Slovenia news programme. I was only sorry that they managed to prevent me from publishing exclusive reports. Thanks to my Ukrainian friend and top cameraman Viktor, I got special permission from General Valerii Zaluzhnyi to visit the first combat positions at Bakhmut and Chasiv Yar. In addition to us, in those 14 days, only the CNN and Sky News teams managed to do that.
I presume that was life-threatening for you.
It was not so dangerous on the battlefield itself, because we were hiding from the hail of grenades in a bunker with Ukrainian soldiers. It was dangerous when we drove to and from the battlefield through the Chasiv Yar, though. That is when we were targeted by Russian artillery, drones or helicopters on the road. Despite the worldwide exclusivity, RTV refused to publish our footage. In Kyiv, where we were granted exclusive permits, they were shocked by RTV’s behaviour.
What did the editors give as the reason for their decision?
They claimed that they did not have enough space in their programmes for stories from Ukraine. Some of them mentioned revenge because, when I was the director of the broadcaster, I, following the example of ORF and ZDF, had cut a few minutes from the Dnevnik (Daily News) and Odmevi (Echoes) programmes. Others accused me of defending Ukrainian fascists or carrying out anti-Russian propaganda. Thus, they published only three of my reports from the Bakhmut area. The other six, which showed the suffering of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians, were on hold for a long time. Slovenian viewers never saw them.
In autumn 2022, after a successful counter-offensive, it looked like the Ukrainians were going to liberate Ukraine when they drove the Russian troops to flight at Kharkiv and Kherson. What stopped them?
In a few weeks, the Ukrainian army liberated more than 6,000 square kilometres of their homeland – which is the size of the entire Slovenian region of Štajerska. The advance was halted because the Ukrainians no longer had enough soldiers, weapons and ammunition. The Russian army gained time to reorganise and reinforce itself, despite heavy losses. The number of Russian troops on the Ukrainian front then rose from 180,000 to 300,000 men.
A new attempt to liberate the occupied territories was the counter-offensive in the summer of 2023. Despite high expectations, it did not yield results. Why?
There are two reasons. The overwhelming superiority of the Russian forces and tactical mistakes by the leadership of the Ukrainian army, which forced General Zaluzhnyi to leave his command. In short: the Ukrainians tried to penetrate south to the Sea of Azov at Zaporizhzhia. Russian forces managed to halt their advance with air and helicopter strikes, drones and artillery. They were stopped on heavily fortified and mined Russian defensive lines. When Viktor and I arrived on the battlefield at Zaporizhzhia, both sides were shelling each other fiercely, but neither was advancing. Of the foreign journalists, only Ben Wedeman, CNN’s war correspondent, was there with his small team.
Last year, we saw the gradual advance of the Russian occupation forces in eastern Ukraine, particularly in the Donbas region.
In 2024, the Russians slowly occupied an additional 4,168 square kilometres of Ukraine in the Donbas region, which is about 70 percent of Slovenian Štajerska. After heavy losses, they took several small towns in one year, such as Avdiivka, Toretsk, Selydove, Vuhledar and Kurakhove. The advance was made possible by Moscow’s willingness to win at any cost. The human life of a Russian soldier is not worth even a cent. The Russians are sending waves of soldiers into the attacks, who are dying one after the other. After losing 3,000 men in the first attack on Bakhmut, they sent 5,000 men in the second attack. When they were all killed, they sent 10,000, and so on. After some 100,000 Russian soldiers had been killed and wounded, it was only after 10 months of fierce fighting that they managed to overwhelm the exhausted and decimated Ukrainian defences. This is the Russian recipe for victory.
That is why, when fierce battles are fought, they both talk about the so-called ‘meat grinders’.
The Russians are attacking Ukrainian positions on completely open plains, using unguarded assaults. According to the prisoners, they have no choice, because behind them are troops who would shoot their own men if they turned back and did not continue the offensive. This tactic was already used in Stalin’s Soviet Union, during the Second World War. Russian commanders also send men to attack as decoys to expose weaknesses in the Ukrainian defences. As they run directly to their deaths in the assault, many take psychotropic drugs. They use them, or even alcohol, to reduce the fear of these suicide attacks. Despite the terrible losses, more and more troops are being sent to Ukraine. In the summer of 2024, 520,000 Russian soldiers were already fighting in Ukraine; today, there are an almost unbelievable 700,000. The ratio of fighting in some battlefields is 1:20 in favour of the Russians.
The fastest advance of the Russian army in recent months has been on the Pokrovsk battlefield.
Viktor and I were in Pokrovsk, a small town with a distinctly Soviet look. In the last three months, the Russians have advanced 40 kilometres from Avdiivka, despite huge casualties. By way of comparison, the distance from the Ukrainian border in the east to the border in the west is more than 1,400 kilometres. This means that, at this ‘rapid’ pace, it would take the Russians 9 years to occupy the whole of Ukraine, and, based on current casualties, they would have to sacrifice as many as 2.4 million soldiers.
Both sides have suffered heavy losses in this war. Do we have any figures?
According to various sources, 85,000 Ukrainian soldiers were killed and 415,000 wounded in the three years of the war. On the other hand, according to Western sources and Russian NGOs, Russian forces have lost more than 800,000 men, of which 138,000 were killed and 662,000 wounded. This means that at least 1,300,000 people have already been killed or wounded as a result of the war launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Another 42,000 civilians are believed to have been killed, and at least 14,000 have been arrested in the occupied territories by members of the FSB secret political police, whose fate is unknown. Several hundred were found in the liberated territories in mass, unmarked and hidden graves, shot in summary proceedings.
Last August, Ukrainian forces surprised the Russians and invaded Russian territory in the Kursk region. Among military analysts, assessments are divided as to the sensibility of this incursion …
It was a good and risky idea, but it is now clear that it did not have the intended effect. The Russian offensive on other battlefields has, therefore, not stopped. It is interesting, however, that Putin sent 11,000 elite members of the North Korean army to the battlefield there, who had to retreat, crushed by heavy losses.
Do you dare to predict how much longer the war in Ukraine will last? US President Donald Trump said in an interview with The New York Post that he had spoken by telephone with Russian leader Vladimir Putin about ending the war in Ukraine.
No sensible person would dare to predict that.
While many on the left, including Milan Kučan, are calling for an end to the arming of Ukraine and the West, I wonder whether authoritarian Russia, with its military, poses a threat to democracies in the West?
If military aid to Ukraine were to be stopped, this would allow Russia to win a complete victory, to occupy Ukraine, and thousands of people would end up in mass graves as a result of anti-Russian actions. It is appalling that anyone would support such a solution. If the Russians occupy Ukraine, they will also appropriate Ukraine’s powerful military industry and will be able to carry out a general mobilisation on the occupied territory and significantly increase the size of their army. Already now, the Russian army numbers as many as 1.5 million men. It already has more soldiers than all the European countries put together. In Ukraine alone, the Russian army has 3,000 tanks and 9,000 cannons. Not a single European country has so many weapons. It is a real miracle that the Ukrainian army still manages to maintain such a large military force. The Russians have two further huge advantages over the Europeans. Moscow is willing to sacrifice millions of lives to win without any qualms, while in Europe, there are fewer and fewer who are even capable of fighting. Mark Rutte, Secretary-General of NATO, was very clear when he said: “We are secure now, but that may not be the case in five years. We need to begin today – spending more, increasing production, and ensuring resilience. If defence spending does not increase, Europeans might need to get out their Russian language courses or go to New Zealand.”
We are coming to the end of our conversation. For a few months, you were the editor-in-chief of the weekly Domovina (Homeland).
The story ended very quickly.
If I am not mistaken, in less than a year, the director of Domovina, or the company that publishes the weekly, has lost a number of experienced journalists, as many as four editors-in-chief and now the chief technical editor. How come?
I have no comment. But I am grateful to the management of the School of Advanced Social Studies (FUDŠ) for offering me a job – the position of lecturer in journalism and head of the Faculty of Media and Journalism.
So, you are passing on your knowledge and experience to new generations of staff who will work in the Slovenian media?
The School of Advanced Social Studies is one of the best private faculties in Slovenia at this time. We have top lecturers with extensive experience in Slovenian and major foreign media, which is clearly our biggest advantage. We are not only a faculty for journalists, but also for cameramen, photographers, editors, sound technicians, graphic designers, and other media professions. For many years at POP TV and RTV Slovenia, we met students who had studied at the media faculty for five years and yet, at the beginning, could not produce a single television news item, report, or act in front of the camera. This is unacceptable, and the School of Advanced Social Studies is changing this.
And finally. What do you think of the government’s controversial media bill? It has passed its first reading in Parliament …
I agree with colleagues such as Dr Dejan Verčič, Dr Matevž Tomšič and Dr Borut Rončević, who have described the bill as bad and harmful. Unfortunately, we do not have enough time for me to present the arguments. I think that such a law is even dangerous for a democratic society, because it allows the authorities to restrict freedom of speech and to censor it. I myself do not want to see a media world in Slovenia like the one in Serbia, Belarus, Russia and China. I am concerned about what this means for the development of democracy in Slovenia, because the government is supported in this law even by the Slovene Association of Journalists, many journalists, and part of the media profession.
Biography
Valentin Areh was born in August 1971 in Ljubljana. In 1997, he graduated from the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ljubljana with a degree in history and sociology, and in 2003, he completed a postgraduate master’s degree in sociological aspects of the American electoral system. As a soldier, he served in the Yugoslav People’s Army in the Knin County of Croatia from 1990 to 1991, and in 1991, he took part in the War for Slovenia and was awarded the Badge of Loyalty to the Fatherland. From 1991 to 1995, as a war correspondent, he covered the wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Middle East, Kosovo, Chechnya, Macedonia and Afghanistan, Iraq and Ukraine, for Slovenian and many foreign media. From 1996 to 2010, he worked at POP TV as a war correspondent and reporter for the foreign editorial team of the show 24UR. From 2010 to 2024, he worked as an editor and, most recently, as Acting Director of TV Slovenia in the news programme of TV Slovenia. Since the middle of last year, he has been the Head of the Faculty of Media and Journalism at the School of Advanced Social Studies in Nova Gorica.
Metod Berlec
