JACK LOSH

The New York Times / A Battle over African Forests

MOLOUKOU, Central African Republic — Beneath the forest canopy, Lucien Maka steps out of a clearing and into his element.

He darts over the shaded undergrowth and finds a cluster of mushrooms, deftly wrapping them in a bundle of leaves. His friend hacks apart a thick branch and gulps down the clean water stored within. They pocket several caterpillars — a local delicacy — and point upward to a bees’ nest swollen with honey, before slashing another tree’s bark to release soaplike sap and wash their hands.

For the outsider, the rain forests of the Central African Republic are an intimidating confusion of vines and towering trunks. For Mr. Maka, whose fellow Bayaka “pygmies” have lived here in the Congo Basin for millenniums by hunting and gathering, this lush wilderness is as convenient as a downtown deli.

“The forest has always provided everything we need,” says Mr. Maka, who is in his early 30s although unsure of his exact age.

But displacement, discrimination and a drawn-out war have put his homeland under pressure. He clambers over a felled tree, emerging in an area cleared by farmers for a cassava crop. “We used to gather food here,” he says. “We must go deeper into the forest.”

FULL STORY: The New York Times (Jan 2020)

Fishermen pulling in their catch on the Mbaéré River, a tributary of the Lobaye River © Jack Losh

Telegraph Magazine / Ukraine’s firefighters on the front line

“The Rescuers is a masterclass in short longform. The writing is sharp and precise and the story is a triumph of portraiture and detail…This is a story that sticks with you. It finds a different, extraordinarily powerful way into the journalistic category of war is hell, a category worthy of constant reminding.” — True Story Award jury statement

The ambulance speeds past birch trees as white as bone. Each pothole rattles the vehicle, each passing metre bringing it closer to the kill zone. Up front, strapped into body armour and a blue helmet, Igor Korzhov shouts into his radio: ‘What’s the address again?’

A sharp left. A slag heap comes into view, one of many that dot Ukraine’s embattled east. The front line is just behind it, growling with artillery fire as it has done all day, and all the months before.

‘What the fuck is the address?’ Igor shouts again.

A sharp right. Across a scrubland of leafless trees, pylons and ruined homes, the village comes into view. ‘49 Chernyshevsky Street,’ replies the dispatcher through a hiss of radio static.

The ambulance driver, Sasha Pavlenko, brakes hard outside a tin-roof cottage. ‘49 Chernyshevsky Street – where is it?’ he yells at a man carrying a bucket of coal, but he looks unsure; Sasha swears and drives on. The property soon appears, destroyed by a Russian shell: windows blown out, roof caved in, a mangled ribcage of rafters. ‘There’s a woman in there,’ says a neighbour, as Igor and his fellow first responders rush in.

FULL STORY: Telegraph Magazine (May 2022)

GQ / Leaving Kharkiv

The headmaster puts on his spectacles, leaves his assault rifle in the office, and sets off to meet the latest arrivals.

Darkness has fallen on the outskirts of Vinnytsia, in central Ukraine. The school’s lights are off to conceal the building from Russian air raids, so the headmaster walks down blacked-out corridors, nodding to his fellow teachers keeping watch, and hobbles outside, an old sports injury nagging at his left knee.

A car is parked in the street with its engine running, bags of belongings stuffed in the back. The headmaster greets its passengers, a family of four who have escaped the Russian bombardment of Kharkiv. “Welcome,” he says with a smile, directing them to join hundreds of others inside who have fled the Russian advance. “You’re safe now.”

The headmaster, Valery Djakiv, gave me a similar greeting after my own tumultuous drive out of the warzone. A week before, I had woken in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s televised declaration of war – or so-called “special military operation” – following a tense night broken by insomnia and a knotted stomach. By then it was clear that Russia was about to invade. Looking out of the window of my rented, city-centre apartment I could see lights on, televisions flickering. One man stood on his balcony, smoking in the dead of night.

FULL STORY: GQ (May 2022)

Foreign Policy / Ukraine dispatches

Blockade Runners Keep War-Torn Ukraine Working

AVDIIVKA, Ukraine—The bombings pause in the besieged town, and 63-year-old Valeriy Melnyk heads outside to feed the pigeons. On a ledge, he uses his right hand to slice bread with a knife, steadying the stale loaf with what remains of his left arm, its stump covered by a woolen hat. What had been underneath was blown off by an artillery shell. FULL STORY

On the Homefront, Families Mourn Ukrainian Fighters

BYSTRETS, Ukraine—In a pine-forested valley, by a spring-melt rushing river, Hanna Potiak enters the village church to mark Orthodox Easter and the resurrection, though not before stopping at the grave of her son, who died fighting on Ukraine’s southeastern front. FULL STORY

In Mariupol, Russia’s Barbarity Is Laid Bare

As shells pounded the Ukrainian city of Mariupol on Tuesday and the blasts came closer, Konstantin faced an impossible choice. Thousands of people had begun their evacuation from the besieged port city, and Konstantin’s car was packed with relatives, ready to depart under artillery fire. Yet his wife, Alyona, was adamant—she wouldn’t abandon her friend. FULL STORY

From Siege to Sanctuary

EUROPEAN ROUTE E50, Ukraine—Darkness fell over Ukraine’s endless fields as an immense line of tail lights stretched into the distance. To the east lay siege and suffering; to the west, an uncertain sanctuary. FULL STORY

Putin Resorts to Syrian Mercenaries in Ukraine. It’s Not the First Time.

In June 2021, four young Syrian men were on the final leg of their journey to the Central African Republic. As their connecting flight took off from Lomé, Togo’s capital, the contrast between the boisterous, bedraggled group and their fellow passengers—African businessmen, U.N. officials, affluent local families, charity workers—could not have been more striking. FULL STORY

In Kharkiv, a Desperate Choice: Stay or Go?

KHARKIV, Ukraine—Hundreds of people huddled on a platform at Kharkiv’s train station on Saturday, glancing up toward each approaching thud of Russian shellfire. Braced against the biting cold, suitcases stacked all around, they waited for the next westbound train to escape the invading Russian army. FULL STORY

Putin Reaches for the Syria Playbook as Ukraine Invasion Stalls

DNIPRO, Ukraine—Cluster bombs rain down on civilian areas in Kharkiv. Blasts strike a TV tower and nearby Holocaust memorial in Kyiv, a city now under threat of siege. Apartment blocks are reduced to rubble. Less than a week after it invaded Ukraine, Russia is resorting to the same brutal playbook that caused immense levels of death and destruction in its previous military campaigns, whether carpet-bombing Chechnya in the 1990s or intensifying sieges more recently in Syria. FULL STORY

The Kharkiv Resistance Has Already Begun

KHARKIV, Ukraine—Local men in jeans and civilian jackets were unloading Kalashnikov rifles and crates of ammo from a car on Thursday as the first signs of a guerrilla insurgency emerged within hours of Russia invading Ukraine. The resistance has already begun. FULL STORY

As Russia Invades, Resolve and Uncertainty in Kharkiv

KHARKIV, Ukraine—Ukrainians woke Thursday morning to the sound of explosions as Russian forces bombarded major cities and unleashed a full-scale invasion early on Feb. 24. FULL STORY

This Ukrainian City Was Already Battered. Now It’s Bracing for War.

AVDIIVKA, Ukraine—Although the day would end with advancing columns of Russian armor in eastern Ukraine, it began almost normally for the fourth graders of Avdiivka’s School Number 7. FULL STORY

Divided by Politics, Bound by Love: A Ukrainian Family Waits for War

AVDIIVKA, Ukraine—As cognac is poured and Russian guns approach, the Holovatenko family cram into their kitchen and shrug off a looming war. Artillery strikes have once again erupted around the eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka and the entire front line. Yet inside their second-floor apartment, explosions are drowned out by lively debate and affectionate teasing between relatives divided by politics, bound by love, and increasingly worried by what awaits their homeland. FULL STORY

Ukraine Waits While Putin Debates

KYIV, UKRAINE—In this cradle of revolution, where mass protests toppled a pro-Russian government eight years ago, barely 100 people gathered in central Kyiv on Wednesday morning to mark a government-declared Unity Day. Handmade posters proclaiming “Unity Is Strength” and “Unity Is Peace” were passed around as the group sang the national anthem under a cold gray sky.

Coinciding with the date that U.S. intelligence had warned that Russian armed forces could invade Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s patriotism-boosting initiative seemed to spark little enthusiasm among the public. Instead, it was met by the same collective shrug that many Ukrainians have given to the heightened threat of war as Moscow encircles the country with vast quantities of armor and infantry—between 130,000 and 150,000 troops, according to recent estimates. FULL STORY