The Battle of Donetsk Airport remains one of the most searing and symbolic episodes of Russia’s war against Ukraine. In 2016, just a year after the airport fell, veteran war correspondent Sergei Loiko joined me on the Nanaimo edition of Nash Holos to talk about what he witnessed during his four days inside the shattered terminal—an experience that shaped his award‑winning reporting and his novel Aeroport.
His reflections, recorded live on air on January 20, 2016, feel even more urgent today. What follows is the full, cleaned, and formatted transcript of that conversation.
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**Transcript**
**Pawlina:** It’s now been eleven years since the battle for the Donetsk airport, a siege that has become one of the most iconic and defining moments of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. The battle lasted 242 days, ending with the fall of the airport in January 2015. The world watched from a distance, but very few saw it from the inside.
Sergei Loiko did. A veteran foreign correspondent, born in Lithuania, educated in Finland, and based for many years in Moscow, he has covered conflicts around the world—from Chechnya to Afghanistan and Iraq. He covered Ukraine from the first days of the Maidan uprising in November 2013 through to the Battle of Debaltseve in February 2015. And he remains the only international reporter to have spent four full days inside the Donetsk airport, witnessing first‑hand the endurance of the Ukrainian defenders who came to be known as the Cyborgs.
On January 19, 2016, Sergei delivered a powerful visual presentation in Ottawa based on his book Aeroport, published in 2015 in Ukrainian and Russian. An English translation, Airport, followed in 2018, bringing the story of the Cyborgs and the battle to a wider international audience. The novel is a work of fiction grounded in his first‑hand experiences and observations while embedded with the Ukrainian defenders.
The day after his Ottawa presentation, he joined us by telephone from Toronto on the Nanaimo edition of Nash Holos. A decade later, his reflections on the battle, the soldiers, and the cost of war feel even more urgent and unsettling than when he first spoke them.
Here again is that interview, recorded live on air on Wednesday, January 20, 2016.
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**Pawlina:** Yesterday evening, Tuesday, January 19, the Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Ottawa hosted a presentation entitled *The Battle of Donetsk Airport* by Sergei Loiko, a war correspondent with the *Los Angeles Times*. Sergei Loiko was born in Finland, and he’s been a correspondent for the *Los Angeles Times* since 1991. He has covered wars in Chechnya, Tajikistan, Georgia, Nagorno‑Karabakh, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
He reported from Ukraine from the beginning of Maidan in November 2013 to the Battle of Debaltseve in February 2015. He’s the only international reporter to have spent four full days at the height of the battle for the Donetsk airport in October 2014.
Last night, Mr. Loiko gave a visual presentation based on his Ukrainian‑language book *Aeroport* (2015), about the battle for the Donetsk airport in eastern Ukraine. He joins us now by telephone from Toronto.
**Pawlina:** Sergei, welcome!
**Sergei Loiko:** Yes, how are you doing?
**Pawlina:** I’m doing well, thank you, and we’re delighted to have you here on the program to tell us about your book and your experiences covering the war in Ukraine. My first question is: how did you end up in Ukraine? You’re a war correspondent, so that’s a given, but with the lack of interest in Ukraine in the mainstream media, suddenly Ukraine was in the news. How did you end up there rather than, say, the Middle East?
**Sergei Loiko:** Well, I work in Moscow, and tensions were building at the time when hundreds of Ukrainian protesters gathered in Maidan Square in the middle of the city. They protested against the government of corrupt president Viktor Yanukovych. At some point it looked as if the protests were subsiding, but on November 30, riot police armed with clubs and shields attacked unarmed students—maybe fifty or sixty of them. They beat them badly and arrested them.
The next day the entire city, and half of Ukraine, was in Kyiv. I saw the biggest rally I’ve ever seen in my life—at least one million people. That’s how it all began. After that, I almost never left Ukraine until the hot stage of the war between Russia and Ukraine was over.
**Pawlina:** You were in Donetsk—or Debaltseve, I guess—and you covered the Donetsk airport battles. That must have been terrifying.
**Sergei Loiko:** Yes, that was quite an experience. You must understand that a small group of Ukrainian soldiers and ragtag volunteers, surrounded by far superior forces made up of Russian mercenaries, local rebels, separatists armed by Russia, and even Russian regular troops, were besieging the airport for 242 days and nights—longer than the Battle of Stalingrad.
The airport was not a fortress. You fly from airports and land at airports several times a month—beautiful buildings made largely of glass and metal. But what I saw there was an amazing picture: the tarmac covered with shattered glass, twisted metal bars, railings, concrete, everything destroyed. And a small group of Ukrainian soldiers bravely and selflessly defending what could not be defended.
They didn’t sleep. They didn’t eat properly. There was not a cubic centimeter of air that could protect you from bullets. They were constantly under fire—bullets, rounds, missiles, mortars. They were ill‑supplied, but they still resisted.
Once I asked one of the defenders, “What the hell are you fighting for here? What are you defending? Don’t you see you’re defending plain air?” And he said, “Yes. We’re defending our air of freedom.”
For this perseverance, bravery, and selfless heroism, even the enemy called them Cyborgs.
**Pawlina:** When did you leave the area?
**Sergei Loiko:** I was there for four days. I planned to leave earlier, but the armored vehicles that were supposed to replace personnel and bring supplies were all destroyed, so I stayed.
Every day I witnessed some totally heroic act. Some people may say it was madness. At one point, a Ukrainian tank sent to support the defenders was hit and burned. The three crew members jumped out and were shot by the rebels and Russians. They died.
At dusk, the defenders crawled out onto the tarmac and brought back two bodies. They couldn’t find the third because it had been blown to pieces by a mortar hit. The next day, the commander of the tank troops called the airport garrison commander and said, “We need to send the boy home for a proper burial.” He was told, “There’s nothing left of him.” The commander said, “Find something we can send home to his family.”
A reconnaissance unit went out under crossfire and found a charred piece of the tankman’s thigh. They brought it back. The commander gathered everyone who could stand and said, “I cannot order you to do this. You don’t know this man. He came here to help us and died. We need to send him home for a proper burial. Are there any volunteers to go out on the tarmac and risk your lives for a piece of flesh of a soldier you don’t know?” Everyone raised their hands.
During a fierce battle, two young men jumped out the windows, ran unarmed to the spot, found an empty grenade‑launcher box, placed the remains inside, tied it to an armored vehicle, and sent him home.
Things like that happened almost daily. The whole place looked surreal—like a film set. You expected Steven Spielberg or Ridley Scott to appear and yell “Cut!” But nothing like that happened.
The soldiers looked surreal too—dirty, covered in soot, exhausted, eyes wild from adrenaline and lack of sleep. Like samurai, already half dead, ready to die. And around the airport, hundreds and thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and volunteers were lining up to go there because they knew it was the main battle of the war.
Putin’s men were fighting at the airport because when they confronted the real Ukrainian army—weak and inexperienced—they defeated it in many places. But here they encountered something they didn’t expect. They were confronted by Cyborgs. And those Cyborgs were people from Maidan. It wasn’t the army—it was Maidan resistance fighters who took up arms and moved to the airport. It was symbolic.
That was the end of the hot stage of the war because Russian losses were so huge that Putin realized he could defeat the Ukrainian army, but he could not defeat the spirit of freedom of the Ukrainian people, which was so vivid at the airport.
Yes, in the end the airport fell. It collapsed on the defenders. Some were captured, some died. But it was a Pyrrhic victory for Russia. It became a Kosovo Field for Ukraine. I’m sure it will go down in history as a great feat of Ukrainian warriors defending their independence, their motherland’s freedom, and Ukraine’s aspirations.
**Pawlina:** I hear a lot of pain in your voice. You’ve seen so much. I’m in pain just listening to your stories, and you were actually there. You’ve written a book called Aeroport. Was this cathartic for you? Did it help you deal with what you witnessed?
**Sergei Loiko:** Well, it’s a novel. I had spoken out as a reporter and written dozens of stories. I was awarded prestigious prizes for my coverage of Ukraine, including the OPC Bob Considine Award. But as a journalist, you’re limited by the format—whether you’re a photographer or a writer.
At the airport, I was both. I felt something inside me bursting out. They say you should write when you cannot help it. I couldn’t help it anymore. The novel was burning in my chest. I wrote it within a month.
Why a novel and not documentary? Because I knew only about fifty warriors personally, but there were hundreds. I didn’t want to offend anyone. The novel is based on my recollections, recordings, notebooks, and forty‑three hours of interviews with defenders who stayed to the last second and survived.
The book is not only about the airport. Every other chapter is about the last five days of the siege. The chapters in between tell the whole history of the Ukrainian revolution and conflict through the eyes of a photographer—the main character. Maidan, the carnage, the snipers on February 20, the annexation of Crimea, the invasion and capture of Sloviansk, the encirclement at Ilovaisk, the defense of Pisky—the entire war is in that novel.
There was a moment when I photographed a machine gunner in Pisky. He had an old 1940s machine gun, his hand was bandaged, and he looked like an American soldier from Vietnam War chronicles. When my story was published, the editor said it was an iconic photo and placed it at the top.
I called the commander and said, “Your guy will lead the story tomorrow.” He said, “No, he won’t lead anything. He’s dead.” I made a mistake: I posted another photo of him on Facebook and wrote that he had died defending Ukraine. Many comments came—“Glory to the heroes,” and so on. Then one comment stood out: “Noooooo, I don’t believe it.” It was written by his wife. She found out about her husband’s death from my Facebook post. For a long time, I felt personally responsible.
There are many stories like that in the book. I strongly advise you to read it. It came out in Russian and Ukrainian in September. It was my condition that it be published simultaneously in both languages. The English translation is in the works and will come out in July. The Poles are publishing it in February, and the Dutch, Estonians, Czechs, Georgians as well.
Two Hollywood companies—Columbia Pictures and Sony—tried to buy exclusive rights to four of my Los Angeles Times stories, including the names and characters. That would mean I couldn’t use my own characters again. I said no. I don’t want someone in California writing something made‑up based on real Cyborgs. I said, “Take my book as the plot.” I threw away $150,000. Maybe I’m an idiot, but if there’s ever a movie about this battle, it should be told as a true story—the way my book is. It’s a novel based on true facts. A true story I witnessed with my own eyes.
**Pawlina:** Sergei, thank you so much for telling us your story and telling us about your book. The English version will be titled Aeroport 2015 as well?
**Sergei Loiko:** It will be called Airport. We expect it before July 1.
**Pawlina:** Excellent. Thank you so much for coming on the show, for writing the book, and for sharing your incredible stories. All the best to you.
**Sergei Loiko:** Thanks again. And the best to you. It was nice talking to you.
**Pawlina:** Thank you so much, Sergei. Bye‑bye.
**Sergei Loiko:** Bye‑bye. Take care.
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**Pawlina:** We were speaking with Sergei Loiko, war correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, about his book Aeroport. I spoke with him on January 20, 2016, the day after he launched the book in Ottawa. Aeroport is a novel based on his experiences and observations while embedded with Ukrainian defenders during the battle for Donetsk airport. An English translation was released in 2018 as Airport. It’s still in print and available from online booksellers.
Stay tuned for Myra’s review on Knyzhka Corner.
