CBS News’ Holly Williams On The “Surreal” Experience Of Reporting On The Front Lines Of Ukraine

deadline.com:

CBS News’ Holly Williams calls the experience of covering Russia’s invasion “surreal,” and even if that word gets a bit overused, she has good reason.“This is this is Europe,” she told Deadline in an interview on Thursday. “For a lot of Americans, it’s very recognizable.

It’s a similar lifestyle. It’s the same shops. It’s the same kind of quality of life. And now they’re being hit by airstrikes and missile strikes.

It’s very distressing, actually, as someone who’s spent a lot of time here.”Williams, a foreign correspondent for CBS News since 2012, reported from the front lines of the crisis in the prelude to the invasion, with a story on a village in eastern Ukraine that already was the scene of shelling on Monday night, as the country’s military have been fighting Russian backed separatists.ABC News’ Martha Raddatz And Ian Pannell On Covering The Human Side Of Ukraine War: “Praying For The Best, And Fearing That The Worst Is Coming”“We’re afraid.

Only a fool wouldn’t be afraid. We don’t know what’s going to happen,” one woman, a factory worker, told her.Williams, who had been to the area with the president of Ukraine last year, said that people “are kind of hanging on to a kind of tenuous existence a few miles from the frontline.”“What was so sad about that place is that they said to us that there was a lot of fighting there in 2014, 2015 and 2016, and then things had kind of calmed down.