Reporting from the front lines of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has left one Fox News journalist with lasting trauma, he revealed Saturday.
Trey Yingst disclosed the effects of his experience in an opinion piece for USA Today.
The journalist — who previously reported from the Gaza Strip — said his time in Ukraine had proved life-altering.
Yingst described his fateful decision to remain in-country to cover the conflict, even as many of his peers opted to leave in the face of airstrikes and artillery bombardments on the capital of Kyiv.
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“I decided I would stay, even when most of our crew pulled out,” he wrote.
Yingst said he doesn’t regret doing so in spite of the resulting issues.
“The decision proved a fateful one, with life-altering effects,” he said. “It wasn’t a question for me. I don’t regret my choice, but the decision has altered my life and mind forever.”
Yingst described witnessing many of the horrors of war in his time in Ukraine — an experience with which he’s still wrestling.
“I have reported under incoming fire, seen lifeless bodies strewn across landscapes and experienced complex grief that I still process today,” he wrote. “I know firsthand the rush of adrenaline that clouds your ability to process emotions.”
From @usatodayopinion: Rarely do we discuss what it feels like to get home from a monthslong assignment and lie there in silence … That needs to change.https://t.co/k1hH3DSqIe
— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) February 26, 2023
Individuals who experience traumatic events — such as those in a combat zone — are susceptible to developing post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition that can prove debilitating.
“What I witnessed still haunts me,” Yingst said of an environment he called “hell on earth.”
He described the experience of many veterans and survivors of conflict in terms that could draw upon his own experiences in Ukraine.
“For many, post-traumatic stress disorder is not a cut or wound that stings immediately, but rather a dull scar that remains dormant until a sound, a dream or a smell brings memories rushing back in a way that makes it hard to distinguish reality from imagination,” the Fox News reporter said.
WARNING: The following video contains graphic images that some viewers may find disturbing.
The war in Ukraine through my eyes. pic.twitter.com/yDBXwm17OU
— Trey Yingst (@TreyYingst) February 24, 2023
Fox News cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski and Ukrainian journalist Oleksandra Kuvshynova were killed in a shelling that injured correspondent Benjamin Hall in March.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has proved the bloodiest war in Europe since World War II.
According to The New York Times, the conflict has featured mass killings of civilians as well as sexual violence in occupied towns and villages — acts that Ukrainian authorities have sought to see prosecuted as war crimes.
