Lisette Reymer and Dan Pannett in Kyiv. Photo: RNZ/The Detail: Supplied
Newshub's Europe correspondent Lisette Reymer and cameraman Dan Pannett have witnessed some of the horrors of Russia's invasion of Ukraine first-hand. They talk to The Detail about what it's like reporting from a war zone.
A woman stares down the barrel of the TV camera pleading for help.
"Help for us, help for Ukraine because the Russian people kill us about nothing," she weeps.
Behind the camera are Newshub's Europe correspondent Lisette Reymer and cameraman Dan Pannett.
It's just one image that remains with the pair from their many weeks covering the Russian invasion of Ukraine and telling the stories of refugees desperately trying to escape their homeland.
When most Kiwis their age are flying off on carefree overseas adventures, Reymer and Pannett are in a war zone. They're working 20-hour days, scurrying into bunkers when sirens blare and trying to explain themselves to suspicious armed police.
Witnessing scenes of refugees waiting for hours at the train station in Lviv before cramming into train carriages when their turn came is another experience Reymer and Pannett will never forget.
"They hold them in a holding pen underground and then release them when the train arrives and they are literally running just to get in a door and see if they can fit their family in there," says Reymer
If the family can't all fit in, they get off and run to another carriage.
"There's such panic," she says. "It's life or death."
"You just think, wow, that was crazy what we just witnessed," says Pannett.
Speaking to The Detail from Odesa late last week, before they packed up and left for neighbouring Moldova, Reymer and Pannett reveal their most frightening moments of the last month.
Police and army officers constantly stop them and ask for their documents, suspicious the two New Zealanders are Russian spies. Pannett was once ordered to delete footage he'd taken of an army tank parked at a checkpoint.
They describe the scene driving into Odesa, a port city on the Black Sea, where Russian warships have been waiting ominously.
"Checkpoints and bunkers were built into the paddocks on the side of the road, the ploughed up wheat fields were turned into trenches," says Pannett.
"When we saw the camouflaged nets and the tanks hidden by foliage, it feels like a movie set, but it's real life and there's going to be a war here," says Reymer.
The pair explain how they decide where to go next and what stories they cover. As Reymer says, a team of two can't match everything the international networks do because they have "teams of hundreds on the ground".
They don't stay in one place for too long because it’s too risky, but they tend to go to places like Odesa, where an attack appears imminent, and aim to leave before it gets too dangerous.
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