JACK LOSH | JOURNALIST

Five years ago, when Hassan was 11, militiamen killed his father not far from his home in Kaga Bandoro, a small, cattle-trading town in the Central African Republic, he says. Full of sadness and anger, the boy, a member of the country’s disenfranchised Muslim minority, didn’t believe the courts would deliver justice. The only thing he trusted, he says, was a Kalashnikov.

So, not long after his father’s death, Hassan (identified with a pseudonym for security concerns) joined the Séléka alliance of rebels, a coalition of local and foreign fighters in the civil war, he says. The largely Muslim group seized large swaths of the country in 2013, triggering reprisals from mostly Christian militias called the anti-balaka.

His first job: working as a bodyguard for a commander whose armed group was terrorizing towns across this Texas-sized country, sandwiched between Chad and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Three months later, Hassan says, he was promoted to lieutenant and put in charge of about 50 people, including 10 other children. “At the beginning, I was scared,” he says. “But later, I lost this fear. I got used to holding a gun.”

The rebels also tasked him with recruiting more children, offering him sporadic and meager rewards. “I liked my work,” he says. “On special holidays, I would be given cigarettes and money.”

But as the war raged on, supplies dwindled, and the death toll mounted on both sides. Most nights, he and his platoon slept in the bush. While on guard duty, he says, he shot civilians if they didn’t listen to his commands and stop. “I saw a lot of blood,” he says. “I would be happy after attacking a town. But this feeling went away, and I became scared when I realized that my enemy would come back.”

Today, that bloodshed continues. After a tentative lull in early 2016, the civil war began raging again later that year. The rebel alliance has fragmented into rival factions that fight over mineral resources and trade routes across the Central African Republic. Militias are bolstering their ranks with more kids, as a United Nations–led task force struggles to help thousands of former child soldiers reintegrate into society…

FULL STORY: Newsweek (June 2018)

DRUZHKIVKA, Ukraine — Volodymyr Semistyaga was wading through documents in the archives of Luhansk University when the stomp of boots interrupted his reading. A group of pro-Russian separatists knocked him down, pulled a sack over his head and dragged him from the building.

It was June 2014 and fighting between Ukrainian government forces and Russian-backed insurgent groups in eastern Ukraine was intensifying. Separatists had claimed independence in the so-called People’s Republics of Luhansk and Donetsk. Increasingly, people were going missing as neighbors turned on one another.

Semistyaga — one of several university professors to face arrest when rebels purged the faculty — was taken to a dank basement in central Luhansk, where he encountered two other prisoners: teenage girls, dressed only in underwear. A soldier nicknamed Bison ran the detention facility, alongside a nurse called Katya. The pair brandished two large blades and threatened to skin the captives’ hands and arms, then scalp them.

The violence began after Semistyaga was transferred to a nearby cell two hours later. “I heard the girls screaming as the guards raped them,” he said. “This happened every night for the next three weeks, on and off from dusk till dawn.

The forgotten conflict on Europe’s doorstep — which began four years ago this month — has killed more than 10,000 and displaced 2 million more. Ukraine’s army continues to fight Russian-backed separatists over an unmoving no-man’s land, with no real end in sight.

Shelling and explosions are the most conspicuous signs of the ongoing war. But the testimonies of Semistyaga and many others point to unseen violence inflicted on those caught up in the conflict. Civilians in Ukraine’s lawless eastern regions have been subjected to sexual violence at the hands of Russian-led forces and Ukrainian government troops as both sides attempt to stamp out dissent.

Abuse is prevalent but corruption, impunity and sub-standard legislation are denying justice to survivors. U.N. human rights monitors say the proliferation of these incidents in eastern Ukraine could amount to war crimes, and highlight “prevailing impunity for human rights violations and abuses.”

“This is partly due to the fact that the conflict is ongoing and that a part of Ukraine’s territory remains under the control of armed groups,” says the U.N.’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in a report. “The impunity also reflects a systemic decades-old challenge to ensure accountability, as well as the failure to bring those responsible from one’s own ranks to account.”

FULL STORY: Politico (April 2018)

KAGA-BANDORO, Central African Republic — On a dirt track beneath a fierce sun, three U.N. peacekeepers guard the dividing line.

On one side of a small bridge lies the rebel stronghold, where gunmen freely roam. On the other is a designated “arms-free zone” on Kaga-Bandoro’s outskirts — a sliver of territory where the “blue helmets” keep the peace and thousands of displaced people shelter around a desolate airstrip.

Years of rebellion, mismanagement and sectarian violence have divided this dusty cattle-trading town and roiled the rest of the Central African Republic, leaving the country’s Western-backed government toothless and unable to exert much authority beyond the capital, Bangui. In the absence of an effective government, more than a dozen armed groups and a multitude of local militias have usurped control of about 80 percent of the impoverished former French colony. Hundreds of thousands have been uprooted from their homes, and more than half of the population is in need of humanitarian aid.

Kaga-Bandoro has, for years, shunned central authority. But even in this anarchic space, rebels here and elsewhere throughout the country are providing some show of statehood. The ruling militants run customs, charge taxes, give out fines and operate their own gendarmes.

FULL STORY: The Washington Post (March 2018)

The teacher promised he was not like the others. On the first day of term, he told pupils that he was a caring family man and would not pressurise them to have sex with him.

“He wrote his number on the board and said we could call him any time if we needed help,” said Néville, 14, who is trying to concentrate on getting an education in the Central African Republic (CAR) while living through a brutal civil war.

Néville’s classmate, a schoolgirl aged 13, later called their middle-aged teacher about a homework assignment but was distressed when he demanded sex. When she refused, the teacher withheld her marks and banned her from class.

A year on, against the backdrop of intensifying armed conflict, Néville has joined forces with other students to battle against a sex-for-grades scandal that blights CAR’s education system. Schoolchildren have a nickname for such a predatory practice: sexually transmitted grades.

FULL STORY: The Times (March 2016)

As wind whips through an open cockpit, the bush plane banks eastward above the red earth of central Africa. Columns of black smoke tower on the horizon—the calling card of armed cattle herders. The dry season is their time to escape the arid Sahel in search of pasture for their enormous droves—burning forest and poaching wildlife along the way. But they are not the only intruders. A bullet hole in the plane’s wing from a guerrilla’s potshot is a reminder that the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) still operates in these badlands, where war is again intensifying. The pilot, Cédric Ganière, peers into the hot, darkening haze. “There is nothing romantic about this,” he says. “They are destroying a country that isn’t theirs. The fox is in the middle of the chickens. It is just kill, kill, kill.”

This is the front line in the battle to save Chinko—one of the largest intact wildernesses in the heart of Africa. The reserve, deep in a remote corner of the war-torn Central African Republic (CAR), lies near borders with Congo and South Sudan. Sitting on an ancient volcanic plateau, the area supports an extraordinary mix of species thanks to a fusion of Congolian rainforest and wooded savannah, nourished by underground wells that feed an expansive network of waterways. This patchwork has created a vital paradise, home to hundreds of bird species and imperiled populations of megafauna—lion and leopard, chimpanzee and antelope, hippo and buffalo, wild dog and golden cat. Devoid of human habitation, it is one of the last holdouts for the country’s endangered elephant population.

But this enchanted Eden is under siege. A protracted civil war is escalating in the region—a brutal and forgotten conflict that has prompted warnings of genocide from the UN. Militarized poacher units have plundered the park to feed the lucrative, insatiable demand for bushmeat, ivory, animal skin, and traditional medicine. Miners illegally dredge riverbeds for diamonds and gold. And the slash-and-burn tactics of nomadic herders, who kill game to supplement their meager rations and salary, threaten a fragile ecosystem.

Within this maelstrom, a group of conservationists is fighting to protect Chinko. Leading this resistance is David Simpson, a charismatic 30-year-old and the park’s manager. His hunger for adventure led him to quit his factory job in the United Kingdom and move to the wilds of central Africa to work for a big-game hunting firm before transforming the area into a unique sanctuary.

Covering an area almost twice the size of Yellowstone, Chinko has since become a mini-state within a failed nation-state. The biggest employer outside the capital of Bangui, Chinko hires hundreds of locals (including reformed poachers) as rangers, builders, farmers, mechanics, and medics. But the park’s survival hangs on the fate of a chronically unstable region. Renewed conflict could wipe out everything Simpson and his cadre are dedicated to protecting.

FULL STORY: VICE Magazine (April 2018)

KIEV — At sunset, on the outskirts of Kiev, Anton lights a cigarette and looks out from his balcony, hundreds of miles from war, from home, from love.

Life for this middle-aged, soft-spoken doctor had become unbearable in his hometown of Donetsk, a frontline city held by Russian-backed forces in eastern Ukraine. His decision to leave, however, was not taken lightly — it meant abandoning his long-term partner.

Nor would fleeing the warzone lead him to safe ground.

Anton is among 1.6 million Ukrainians uprooted by war to other parts of the country. As the conflict grinds through its fourth vicious winter, the state is failing these disenfranchised citizens, who face poverty, prejudice and perplexing levels of bureaucracy.

Anton is also a gay man living in a former Soviet nation where homophobia flourishes. Internally displaced people (IDPs) already face stigma here; it is intensified when their sexuality or gender identity doesn’t match the mainstream.

FULL STORY: Politico (December 2017)

MYRNA DOLYNA, Ukraine — In an overgrown minefield, Yulia Boiko kneels down and starts gardening. Years of war have caused weeds to grow high in the abandoned croplands of eastern Ukraine. Clad in flak jacket and face mask, she uses shears to snip back sun-scorched scrub, removing vegetation one careful inch at a time to avoid hidden tripwires.

A small patch of earth is eventually exposed. Boiko stands up, then scans the ground with her metal detector to ensure it is clear. She repeats the painstaking process — one pace farther into a 600-acre field where wheat and sunflowers once grew.

FULL STORY: Washington Post  (November 2017)

The wolf saved Gayde Rizaeva from the rapists but could not protect her from the horror she was about to witness.

In July 2014, Rizaeva, a mother in her early 30s, was delivering supplies to Ukrainian forces in the country’s restive east when she and three companions were captured by pro-Russian separatists. The militants seized the group—a journalist, a priest, Rizaeva and their driver—and took them to a nearby base, where they locked them up in a makeshift jail. Rizaeva—four months pregnant—says Chechen soldiers arrived and began beating the captives with their boots, fists and rifle butts. She says she was hit so hard that she miscarried.

As the men tossed her across the room, they noticed a tattoo of a wolf on her back. The animal is revered in Chechnya, and the men stopped attacking her. “They asked me if I was from Chechnya,” says Rizaeva, a Crimean Tartar who had fled during Russia’s annexation of her homeland in 2014. “I said no, but they respected me for having this she-wolf and being a Muslim woman.”

They decided to spare her from further abuse, but Rizaeva says she was forced to watch her captors strip two male prisoners, beat them and then rape them with batons. “I kept fainting,” she recalls. “But every time I came to, the attack was continuing.”

Since it began more than three years ago, the war in eastern Ukraine has killed more than 10,000 people. Today, government forces continue to clash with Russian-backed separatists along a static front line, and Chechen troops loyal to Ramzan Kadyrov—the country’s strongman leader and a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin—have fought alongside the latter.

The war has triggered sexual violence on both sides—and in almost all cases, no one is punishing the perpetrators. Survivors are gradually coming forward, offering evidence of abuse, forced prostitution, sexual slavery, mutilation and rape in secret detention centers on the front lines. Human rights monitors have recorded hundreds of cases of sexual violence and suspect many more go unreported due to fear of reprisals, cultural stigma, trauma and a weak justice system, among other reasons.

FULL STORY: Newsweek (November 2017)

PRYMORSKE, Ukraine — In the idle heat, a hundred eyes stare out from the tangle of fishing nets, the fish drying like tiny slivers of tinfoil under a stifling sun. Plastic buckets, battered hulls and lengths of knotted rope litter an otherwise empty beach. A few wooden dinghies bob on the sea’s flat, mercury surface; white light glares in the haze.

It’s peak fishing season and today’s catch is nothing special: Another hot day on a frozen frontline.

Nikolai Gnatoshenko and his fellow fishermen are cleaning up from gutting mullet and flounder, soon to clock off. But most of the men won’t be going home.

The fishing cooperative is based in a rusted shack near the eastern Ukraine conflict zone. Displaced by war and banned from returning to their ruined hometown a few miles away, this group of exiles ekes out a living in the dusty, sun-bleached village of Prymorske in the eastern region of Donetsk by the Azov Sea.

Azov’s northern shores have been home to fishermen since Neolithic times; the sea later provided the USSR with its most productive fisheries. But men like Gnatoshenk, who make their living from the trade today, say they feel like a dying breed.

They face a shrinking market and access to fishing waters, a generational drain toward cities, and the insecurity of protracted violence on a volatile frontier.

FULL STORY: Politico (October 2017)

A cool wind blows across the steppe and through a sprawling, industrial district at the heart of Ukraine’s war zone. After a new truce that few believe can hold, the only sound now in this concrete wasteland is the creak of twisted, rusting sheets of metal. They hang from warehouses sprayed with thousands of bullet holes, surrounded by bomb craters and woodland shredded by machine guns.

Platoons camp out in derelict warehouses on either side of the front line, waiting for this eerie silence to end while finding some comfort in their adopted pets, abandoned by long-absent owners. A little grave lies beside the concrete shell of one gutted factory; a can of dog food is placed in the earth beneath a wooden sign: “Gerda 29.07.2017”.

Just south of the government-controlled town of Avdiivka, this ravaged, near-apocalyptic setting known as the Prom Zone – repeatedly bombarded by rockets and heavy artillery – could be a prime destination for UN peacekeepers if new proposals from Moscow are accepted.

Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, last week gave a thinly-veiled threat to intensify the conflict if the United States began supplying weapons to Kiev. He also suggested a lightly-armed peacekeeping mission be deployed along the front line to help protect ceasefire monitors in eastern Ukraine, where a smouldering conflict has claimed more than 10,000 lives since 2014.

Germany cautiously welcomed the proposition, which could lead to Blue Helmets operating in the EU’s back yard. “The offer shows that Russia has undergone a change in its policies that we should not gamble away,” says Sigmar Gabriel, the German foreign minister.

Others closer to the fighting are less enthused. Frontline troops have poured scorn on Putin’s plan as the warring parties use the latest truce to regroup, reinforce positions and prepare for another round of fighting.

FULL STORY: The Independent (Sept 2017)

As gunfire crackled across the sweltering fields, Max Stodola looked on with blank dread: “It happened so fast — there was nothing I could do. I just thought, ‘See ya, guys, nice knowing you.’”

It was August 2014. The volunteer medic was planning to resume his university studies in a few days — just enough time to join Kiev’s push on Ilovaisk, a key railway junction held by Moscow-backed forces. As he approached the besieged town, a rocket-propelled grenade landed a few meters ahead. It skidded away and detonated near his friend, whose leg was sprayed with shrapnel.

In the coming weeks, Ukraine’s soldiers — encircled by Russian armor and infantry — went on to suffer a heavy defeat. By then, Stodola had returned to university in Odessa. There, he received news that another friend had died throwing himself onto a grenade to save his fellow soldiers.

Stodola, then 24, had already endured an earlier artillery strike near Donetsk, where he had treated two dozen casualties. He continued to volunteer on and off for another 16 months.

Before he left for the war, the scruffy trainee dentist from Odessa was known as a joker — motor-mouthed but good-natured. When he returned, something had changed.

FULL STORY: Politico (September 2017)

In the quiet of the forest, Aleksander holds a rusted pistol and turns it over. Others gather round to admire the handgun, each feeling its weight before shooting an imaginary bullet into the trees. More detritus of war is placed on a picnic table – a swastika-adorned badge, shards of shrapnel, a Soviet medal inscribed “Proletarians of all countries, unite!” The remnants of fallen regimes.

The men are among the thousands of detectorists across eastern Europe hunting for relics of the Red Army, the Third Reich and Imperial Russia. Beneath ploughed field and remote woodland is buried treasure from a turbulent, vanishing past. Even today, the war dead lie in these lands. Sometimes bodies are found.

Each weekend this group, calling themselves the Masovian Guardians of History, heads to the Polish backwoods to escape the city. There is a builder, barman, factory worker, office clerk, postman and sushi chef, among others. Fuelled by vodka and a passion for history, they strip old battlefields of artefacts while trying to dodge the police.

FULL STORY: The Observer Magazine (Sept 2017)

It was the goldfish that led to Oleksandr Grishchenko’s arrest, torture and near-execution. The middle-aged veterinary surgeon decided to flee the embattled city of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine in July 2014 as Russian-backed separatists seized control. First, though, he needed to visit his clinic. “We had a small aquarium and the fish hadn’t been fed for days,” he says. “They were starving.”

An armed separatist cornered him outside, demanding to see his papers, which Oleksandr had left at home. The gunman, increasingly aggressive, accused him of being a spy and ordered him into a car. “There was no reason to run away — I was innocent — so I went with him.”

He was about to join the hundreds of people locked away in basements and jails in the lawless, rebel-controlled areas of the Donbas region, where Ukrainian government forces have been fighting Russian-backed separatists since April 2014. Many of these victims remain in captivity, having been subjected to forced labour, public humiliation, beatings, sexual violence and torture. Grishchenko got away shortly before he was about to be shot.

When I meet him in Kiev three years later, the 56-year-old vet is pleasant and softly spoken, but overshadowed by a profound air of sadness, pain and exhaustion. We talk late into the evening as he relives the day of his arrest and descent into hell.

FULL STORY The Sunday Times Magazine (June 2017)

On a sunny afternoon in Toretsk, a mining town near the front lines in eastern Ukraine, a small, wiry man in his 60s staggers down a potholed street, playing the accordion and busking for change. He’s unshaven and disheveled, sporting a camouflage cap, baggy sweatpants and a grubby telnyashka —the striped undershirt worn by Soviet and Russian troops. He passes by as I chat with a group of Ukrainian government soldiers on a corner opposite the local barracks. The men eye him with disdain; one tosses him a cigarette, and he drifts off.

“Lumpen proletariat ,” says Aleksandr Lubichenko, a Ukrainian military press officer. “He’s an old separatist—I can tell a mile off. Small man, big gun.”

“But he’s only holding an accordion,” I say.

“He’s only holding an accordion now. But give him some money, and the first thing he’ll buy is an AK-47.”

Strained encounters like this are common here in Donbass, Ukraine’s easternmost region on the Russian border. This is the nation’s industrial heartland—a windblown steppe of coal mines and smokestacks that tower over vast fields of sunflowers...

FULL STORY: Newsweek (April 2017)

In an abandoned building on the road to no-man’s land, Ukraine’s frontline dentists are hard at work. These men and women have swapped the safety of their sterilised clinics across the country to join the fight against plaque, cavities and Russian-backed separatists on the eastern battlefield.

An unlikely product of Ukraine’s conflict, Ukrop Dental was founded by Igor Yaschenko, a 52-year-old dentist-turned-activist. In 2015, while delivering aid to under-stocked government troops, Igor was confronted with scores of soldiers stricken with dental problems. Agonising tooth decay and gum disease, he says, were undermining the war effort.

“This is our philosophy: cure the pain and you’ll fight better in battle,” Yaschenko explains. “Healthy teeth make for stronger fighters.”

Hostilities have wrought havoc across the country’s industrial Donbass region, devastating communities and overwhelming healthcare services. A recent surge in fighting has only compounded the crisis. Likewise, decades of corruption and mismanagement have left Ukraine’s military in a parlous state, hobbled by chronic shortages.

In these beleaguered areas where aid is woefully lacking, the volunteers of Ukrop Dental have arrived to help military personnel and vulnerable civilians alike.

FULL STORY: The Guardian (Feb 2017)

Witness: Solitude (September 2017)

BBC World Service: I was tortured (July 2017)

Washington Post: Hundreds missing (June 2017)

Washington Post:: Soviet TV (June 2017)

Witness: Rising risks in journalism (June 2017)

Washington Post: Right Sector (Feb 2017)

The Independent: Trauma (Jan 2017)

The Telegraph: Winter in Donbas (Dec 2016)

Coda Story: War of words. viral videos (Dec 2016) 

The Telegraph: Organ harvesting (Nov 2016)

Guardian Weekend: Rebel world cup (Oct 2016)

Foreign Policy: Donbas warlords (Oct 2016)

Slate + Roads and Kingdoms: Carpathians (Oct 2016)

The Telegraph: Motorola (Oct 2016)

Washington Post: Black market (Oct 2016)

Washington Post: New purge (Oct 2016)

The Telegraph: Back to school (Sept 2016)

The Times: LNR purge (Sept 2016)

The Times: Zaitseve (Aug 2016)

Washington Post: Independence Day (Aug 2016)

Washington Post: Opera singer killed (July 2016)

The Independent: Alt World Cup (June 2016)

Washington Post: Environmental disaster June 2016)

VICE News: Avdiivka (April 2016)

The Times: Prom Zone (April 2016)

NPR: Landmines (April 2016)

The Guardian: Landmines (April 2016)

VICE News: Savchenko jailed (March 2016)

VICE News: Palaces of Propaganda (March 2016)

VICE News: Smugglers (Feb 2016)

PRI: Night Wolves radio interview (Feb 2015)

VICE News: Paranoia and Purges (Feb 2016)

The Guardian Weekend Magazine: The Night Wolves (Jan 2016)

The Guardian Documentary: The Night Wolves (Jan 2016)

The Times: 'Putin reinforces rebels' (Dec 2015)

Indy on Sunday: Soviet nostalgia (Dec 2015)

VICE News: ISIS goes shopping? (Dec 2015)

Indy on Sunday: UN lifeline runs out (Nov 2015)

VICE News: Ukraine’s Forgotten War (Nov 2015)

The Times: Defections (Nov 2015)

VICE News: Crimea goes dark (Nov 2015)

The Times: Underfed, under attack (Nov 2015)

The Times: Clashes at airport (Nov 2015)

The Times : Fighting erupts along front (Nov 2015)

The Guardian: Rebels grow restless (Nov 2015)

VICE News: Ammo dump dispatch (Oct 2015)

The Guardian: Ammo dump explosion (Oct 2015)

VICE News: Fraud & Chewie's arrest mar elections (Oct 2015) 

Indy on Sunday: Corruption fears cloud elections (Oct 2015)

The Guardian: Ukraine rebels expel MSF (Oct 2015)

The Independent: Maidan poster girl to clean up Odessa (Oct 2015)

The Independent: Ukraine: the battle for the truth (August 2015)

Indy on Sunday: Red tape of war (August 2015)

VICE News: Independence Day (August 2015)

The Independent: Both sides hiding weapons (August 2015) 

VICE News: Ukraine's mystery battle (August 2015)

The Guardian: Rebels overhaul education (August 2015)

VICE News: The Chechen battling Russia (August 2015)

The Times: From Our Correspondent (August 2015)

The Guardian: United by separatist derby (August 2015)

The Times: Militia ‘breaching ceasefire’ (August 2015)

VICE News: The Holdouts (July 2015)

The Independent: MH17 (2) (July 2015)

The Independent: MH17 (1) (July 2015)

VICE News: The Cossacks (July 2015)

The Times: Rebels beg Russia for more guns (July 2015)

VICE News: Textbooks and assault rifles (July 2015)

Mail Online: Haunted by MH17 victim (July 2015)

The Times: Rebels rewrite history books (July 2015)

VICE News: Blokpost (July 2015)