MINNEAPOLIS — Ukrainian troops made major progress in regaining control of eastern and southern regions of the country on Monday.
Both the Associated Press and NBC News reported that troops pushed past lines long held by Russia, including a region that Russian President Vladimir Putin had just claimed to annex last week.
While the announcement made instant headlines in the United States by Monday morning, the reality on the ground in Ukraine continues to be more complicated.
"With each liberation comes tragedy," said Terrell Jermaine Starr, a U.S. journalist who was in Ukraine at the onset of the war, and who recently visited some of those newly liberated regions just as the cloud of war began to lift.
"We have to keep in mind that there is an information blackout in these places," Starr said. "I went to the newly liberated city of Izyum, in Eastern Ukraine. The infrastructure is completely destroyed. People are piecing their lives together in real-time."
As founder of the Black Diplomats Podcast, Starr has been documenting the reality on the ground from a first-person perspective. He also uses Twitter and Instagram to share snapshots of life in Ukraine amid a changing war.
His recent trip to Izyum included a trip to a newly discovered mass grave with a Ukrainian journalist who lived under Russian occupation in the region, yet was only beginning to understand the atrocities that were committed.
"It's a prime example of what happens when our humanity fails," Starr said.
Humanity has often been at the center of Starr's reporting throughout the war.
As a longtime scholar of Russia and Eastern Europe, he was already living in Kyiv when Putin first began the invasion. He immediately began filing firsthand reports however he could, but soon, he found himself going beyond the role of a typical reporter.
As he began meeting Ukrainian refugees who were seeking safe passage to NATO countries, Starr, a senior, non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council, became more than a reporter. He successfully made the trip with several individuals and families, helping the uncertain road out of the country.
Fortunately, he says a lot has changed since then. The first sign of significant progress came when the Ukrainian military fended off the Russian invasion of Kyiv.
Starr: "This was supposed to be (Putin's) crown jewel. Immediately when people realized that (taking Kyiv) was not going to happen, it pretty much established the manner in which Ukrainians have moved forward with this war. They say, not only can we fend off pressure, we can beat them."
Erdahl: "When did you start seeing some of those Ukrainians, who you helped escape the country, come back?"
Starr: "When I think about the people who I helped to flee Ukraine as refugees, I think about Irina. She was a cancer patient and we had to help her get to Lithuania and that took us about three days. She spent months in Lithuania and now she's back. I'm actually going to see her today, so when I get off talking with you all, I'm going to visit Irina and we're going to take photos and pose together."
He says it provided further confirmation that, even as these new advances bring tragedy, they also inch a resilient country closer to a return of hope and humanity.
"I've run into plenty of Ukrainians who have gone to Europe and who have gone to America and they all told me they want to return home," Starr said. "And because the Ukrainian military is performing so well, that's given them the confidence to do so."
Follow Terrell Jermaine Starr on Twitter @terrelljstarr or on Instagram @terrelljstarr.
To listen or subscribe to the Black Diplomats Podcast, click here.
For Americans looking to help Ukraine and the Ukrainian people right now, Starr says he sees a humanitarian group called Razom For Ukraine doing meaningful work.
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