“Your help was invaluable in conducting the interview:” Italian journalist talks about Kharkiv JSC’s support

Gigi Donelli, an Italian journalist at Radio24IlSole24Ore (Milan) / author of the podcast 24Reportage, is one of those journalists who knows Ukraine without war. At the first opportunity, he travels to a warring country so that his audience can learn the truth. The radio host “hotly” broadcasts what he sees himself. Gigi Donelli returned to the Kharkiv Region. This is the second visit to the front-line region when the Kharkiv Journalists’ Solidarity Center (JSC) team supports the media worker for the most fruitful work.

In October 2024, Gigi Donelli first visited the JSC of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU) in Kharkiv. Between business trips, his team stopped at the JSC co-working space, where they prepared several live broadcasts. During the day, we showed my colleague how the temporary shelter for people evacuated from front-line villages works. And in the evening, the radio host talked about the next shelling of residential buildings in Saltivka. The media person quickly received assistance in getting by JSC transport to the place of the hit.

In the material, including this, unfortunately, deadly strike on a high-rise building, the journalist says this about Kharkiv:

“In the north, distance is measured by bombs falling on popular areas less than 40 kilometers from the international border with the russian federation. Once a city of students with universities, today, a city is torn between the desire for resistance and fatigue from everyday life under constant attacks….”

In 2025, Gigi Donelli traveled to the Kharkiv Region at the turn of spring and summer. First, he aims to demonstrate how ordinary life in the region has changed in just over six months. Secondly, it seeks to raise the topic of war in the context of peaceful topics, namely, agriculture and medicine.

The Kharkiv JSC team helped to build and then implement the Kharkiv-Derhachi and Kharkiv-Balakliya routes. There is another dimension to these trips: it is 30 km to the russian border in the north and less than 50 km to the contact line in Donbas. This is a territory that has been liberated from occupation, and these fields are being cleared of ammunition (and will continue to be cleared) for a long time. This is a hospital “extreme” to the front, the workload on whose staff has increased because medical facilities in neighboring communities have been mercilessly destroyed by shelling.

Gigi Donelli, in his materials, shows not just an event but looks for a person or people through whom this event will be told. For example, his materials mention statistics, noting that the Kharkiv Region is one of the most heavily mined in Ukraine, and outline ways in which the country will “clean up” the territories. But he “catches” his audience with a highlight: his heroes are a married couple who work together to demine the Kharkiv fields. The interview with them was recorded in the JSC co-working space.

“Dear friends of the Kharkiv JSC. A few words of gratitude for the support you provided me during my visit to the Kharkiv Region. Your help was invaluable in conducting an interview in the Derhachi Community. Thus, I had the opportunity to meet with representatives of the administration, both on health issues and agricultural issues during wartime. Later, thanks to your help, I was able to get to the Balakliya District and monitor the work of the demining corps operating in this part of Ukraine. Thank you again for your invaluable help,” noted Gigi Donelli, the news editor-in-chief at Radio24IlSole24Ore.

A two-day joint project with Gigi Donelli is proof that European media are interested in Ukraine. Journalists are ready to go to the front-line Kharkiv Region, risking themselves not to retell what someone else saw but to speak to the audience on behalf of their own experience.

REFERENCE: Gigi Donelli, a journalist at Radio24IlSole24Ore / the coordinator of news releases and programs at Radio24. He is also the head of Radio 24’s partnership with the European radio project Euranet, focusing on concept and reporting. After completing his studies in international law in New Zealand, he began his journalistic career in the foreign office of Il Giornale. He later gained a short but very rich experience at La Voce di Indro Montanelli. After a period of freelance work in various Italian newspaper editorial offices, in 1995, he participated in the creation of the Sei Milano TV channel. He then moved to the documentary editorial office of Mediaset, where he served as a correspondent for La Macchina del Tempo. Since 1999, he has been working at Radio 24, where he initially worked in the news department and later hosted current affairs programs.

The network of Journalists’ Solidarity Centers is an initiative of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine, implemented in collaboration with the International and European Federations of Journalists and UNESCO and with the support of the People of Japan. Our primary goal is to assist media professionals working in Ukraine during the war. The Centers are active in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipro, Lviv, and Ivano-Frankivsk. The project is part of UNESCO’s broader efforts to support the Safety of Journalists and Freedom of Expression in Ukraine.

Call the Kharkiv JSC at 093 813 7544 (Hanna Chernenko, the Kharkiv JSC coordinator)

Kharkiv JSC