Simon Ostrovsky

Simon Ostrovsky was in Eastern Ukraine covering the conflict for VICE NEWS when pro-Russian separatists grabbed him in 2014. I followed the story online like everyone else does—with that strange mix of concern and distance that happens when something major is unfolding somewhere you’ll never go. When he got out a few days later mostly in one piece, he’d become the kind of journalist who didn’t just report on the story anymore. He was the story.

There’s something that separates people who go and people who talk about going. Ostrovsky went. The separatists took him because he was documenting something they didn’t want documented. He survived it. Most of us work from places where nothing terrible can happen to us. It’s easy to forget that some people don’t have that luxury if they want the work to actually matter.