Irpin

In fact, this is a proxy war, if you like, between the Chechen warlord, Ramzan Kadyrov.

And you'll remember he was responsible for sending his soldiers to invade Ukraine in the first phase of that full-scale invasion, and they were linked to some of the most horrific and wanton war crimes in areas like Irpin' and Bucha northwest of the capital Kyiv.

It's a dispute between Kadyrov and the Dagestan senator, Suleiman Kerimov, uh, who is, was estimated to be worth about $21 billion before the war in Ukraine.

But his wealth has, uh, according to some reports, plummeted at least in half.

So that's what I've been doing with that for my years with my life.

Some of my team in Ukraine was like, would you be willing to come and film in Bucha, Irpin? And I was like, sure.

And they're like, show the world what's going on.

So we got to film under martial law with drones, which is unheard of, being able to actually use a drone, because drones are legal in Ukraine.

So they failed in Hostomel, and they, uh, couldn't, uh, deploy their troops as fast as they liked because our brigade was there, and like brigade, like two, 200 boys, uh, that, uh, were not sent to war because they were conscripts, all right? And, uh, the, the rest of the brigade was in the Luhansk region.

Uh, so they failed, and that is why they, uh, couldn't invade, couldn't cross the Irpin River, and, uh, they did several attempts around Moschun, several other places where they failed as well, all right? Um, and eventually their attack, uh, swallowed itself, like Russians say, [speaking foreign language]

Yeah, I, I, I mean, you were looking at...

I mean, let's look at the array of hardware that was being used in, in, uh, at that point.

Uh, I'm guessing there were mortars on the outskirts of, of the city too, and, uh, well, I mean, you know, c- that is what I consider to be a, you know, a frontline environment, a frontline city environment, you know, defending the city against what essentially is, is, uh, an onslaught, an invasion.

Um, a- and it's on your doorstep.

Uh, a- and I mean, the invasions have changed somewhat, but, you know, to, to, to, but, you know, talk us through, um, a lot of the hardware that was being used at, at the time in the city, uh, a- and the atrocities that were taking place sort of loosely, uh, before we get to the main topic, uh, around sort of Bucha and Irpin and places like that.

Um, so we used howitzers 100%, uh, that's what I know because our brigade utilized, uh, howitzers, uh, that was on the very first day.

You hear some talk in Russian circles of leaving a la-a rump landlocked Ukrainian state, small sized, w-w-in part of the West Bank, the western side of the Dnipro River.

That's what he wants, and the Ukrainians are not gonna allow that because as a Ukrainian official who spent some time in a Russian concentration camp after the big invasion said, "It's terrible to live under Russian bombs, but it's infinitely worse to live under Russian occupation." As the people of Bucha and Irpin, Bucha and Irpin, as well as Mariupol, if Mariupol is freed at some point, can tell us.

And that's why the Ukrainians are literally fighting for their lives as Ukrainians.

That's why they will fight till the end.

March 5th, 2022.

Currently, the Zhytomyr highway, Bucha, Irpin, Hostomel, Makarov, and the north of Vyshgorod District remain the most dangerous in the Kyiv region.

Despite the dangers, a number of Fox's TV competitors had already aired dramatic footage from Irpin, one of those suburbs to the northwest.

It showed civilians trying to flee across a river beneath a burned out bridge.

Thomson says he understood why Fox wanted those images too, to convey the dangers and the stakes.

Senior producers from London and Jerusalem typically took part.

So did network executives in New York.

Thomson says he vetoed a proposed trip to Irpin.

March 2023, first time I was here, was able to go around some of these areas in kind of a weird time, you know.

Bucha and Irpin were just starting to be rebuilt.

The scars of the Russian occupation in Kharkiv were still there.

And I was able to tell some really interesting stories, talk with people who had survived a local imprisonment in places like Balaklia in the Kharkiv region, speak with people who had lost everything up near you know, Bucha and, uh, and Irpin that, that kind of persisted into 24.

And then into 25, I understood that I needed to be here full time and, uh, fully made the, made the shift.

I have not left the country since, uh, February of 25.

Mm.

It's one of the forks when you go to Bucha or, and Irpin.

And so the Ukrainian Army helped us a lot getting it, demilitarizing it, and moving it to Berlin.

And then it was in front of the Russian Embassy on February 24th, 2023, so one year after the full-scale invasion-