When a story as massive as the current invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces develops, it’s not uncommon for the reporters covering the situation to end up becoming part of the story themselves.
Although there are many reasons why reporters can make news of their own during their coverage , it’s often because what they’re reporting on has escalated around them and they have stay as focused on staying safe as they are on telling us what’s going on.
However, the nature of the internet is such that people never really know how they’re going to stand out to the world.
As a result, one Washington D.C.-based reporter is now finding himself in the spotlight not because he’s in any danger, but because of how many people his reports can reach due to his impressive language skills.
On February 21, AP reporter Philip Crowther posted a clip on Twitter that featured a compilation of his reports on the at-the-time burgeoning military conflict in Ukraine.
In the first featured report conducted in English, he explained that Russian-backed forces have have active in Ukraine’s south-eastern Donbas territory for eight years at this point. He also said that despite this, the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv was relatively calm at the time of his report.
According to Al-Jazeera , this has changed as of February 24 as the city is now seeing widespread evacuations in response to explosions heard at the city’s outskirts.
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And while Crowther ‘s Twitter followers were impressed to see him deliver other reports in five additional languages from Kyiv, they also became concerned for his safety as the situation worsened.
However, he has since tweeted that he is no longer in Ukraine and that his colleagues at the Associated Press are working hard to inform the world of what’s happening there in his stead.
After the English report, we can see him conduct one in Luxembourgish, as Luxembourg is where Crowther is originally from.
From there, Crowther is shown also speaking in Spanish, Portuguese, French and German.
Although it’s hard to determine the contents of these reports without knowing each of these languages, we can tell by his reference to a then-upcoming meeting between French President Emmanuel Macron and Russian President Vladimir Putin in his Spanish report that each clip is covering a different event.
And as the situation in Ukraine appears more grim by the moment at the time of this writing, some have taken solace in Crowther’s dedication in reporting.
And of course, it’s simply hard not to be impressed when someone is able to communicate in this way with so many different parts of the world at a moment’s notice.
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