Senior reporter, the Kyiv Independent
An Australian journalist who came to Ukraine a week before the full-scale invasion and joined the Kyiv Independent in the summer of 2022, where he is now a senior reporter and co-authors the weekly War Notes newsletter. He studied at Leiden University and University College London, speaks Ukrainian and Hungarian, and won the Prix Bayeux young reporter award in 2023. He is one of the very few English-language reporters still going right up to frontline positions.
What I believe is the top war journalist in the Ukraine war — English speaking at least, the one that the Western world has access to. Journalists write the first draft of history. Definitely Francis is doing that at a very high level: very thoughtful, very nuanced, and more importantly, focused on the human experience of the war.
Photo: The Kyiv Independent
Ukraine Military History Institute