Covering Ukraine with Martha Raddatz: ‘You don’t leave the biggest story in the world and not go back’

HARRISBURG, Pa. (WHTM) — Sam Sweeney works in the ABC News transportation unit, usually breaking stories alongside Gio Benitez.

But in mid-February, his phone rang. It was his boss. The question: “‘Would you be willing to go to Ukraine tomorrow with Martha Raddatz?’ And I was in West Virginia,” Sweeney said

Sweeney’s answer?

“I was on a plane within 24 hours,” Sweeney said during an interview covering topics ranging from the risks of being in a country where other journalists have died — to when Raddatz, Sweeney, and the crew manage to sleep, in between gathering news and appearing on ABC World News Tonight, Good Morning America and special reports in between. (The answer to that? “You sleep in chunks.”)

To watch the full 15-minute interview, click on the video player below.

Raddatz and Sweeney flew to Lviv before Russia invaded.

“So when we got there, everything was normal,” Sweeney said. “The opera was open. Restaurants were packed.”

Everyone knew what might happen next.

“I remember I was traveling with Martha, and she said to the mayor, ‘Are you prepared for several hundred thousand refugees, or more than a million refugees, to show up here in Lviv?'” Sweeney said.

And even though he knew that was indeed possible — that’s why they were there — on another level, “I just thought to myself, ‘There’s no way that the war is going to break out, and there are going to be hundreds of thousands of refugees showing up.’ And then a couple of days later, that’s exactly what happened,” he said.

They crossed out of Ukraine before the invasion, walking across a border into Slovakia and telling the story of the first wave of refugees.

“It’s just a surreal experience to see women and children, you know, saying goodbye to their fathers and their husbands, not knowing when they’re going to see them again,” Sweeney recalled.

Then they drove to Vienna and flew back to the U.S., in Raddatz’s case because she had to cover President Biden’s State of the Union address.

But “Martha turned to me as soon as we left, and she said, ‘I think we have to go back,'” Sweeney said. “And I agreed. You don’t leave the biggest story in the world and not go back.”

So they went back a week later, flying to Poland and then driving into the country countless other people were fleeing. Again, they went to Lviv. Their first time there, before the war, they flew to the airport there — a “beautiful new facility,” Sweeney said. Or it was, at least: “This last trip we were there, it got hit with an airstrike.”

Sweeney said unlike cities farther east — heavily-damaged Kyiv or decimated Mariupol — some Lviv residents who have stayed continue to live relatively normal lives, while countless others from other cities are using Lviv as a jumping-off point to flee Ukraine.

“And that juxtaposition is just mind blowing, that it’s all happening in this one little place,” Sweeney said. “And just a couple of weeks ago, these people were just like you and I, living a normal life with their families in their homes, going to work, going out to dinner.”

Sweeney said ABC News crews are taking every imaginable measure to stay safe. But the dangers aren’t lost on them.

“There is just an inherent risk that goes with covering a war like this when you’re going up against a nuclear power that’s indiscriminately bombing and shelling innocent people,” he said.

The trade-off for the risk they’re taking?

The ability to “keep everyone up to date on what’s happening and bring you the latest images,” Sweeney said. “And just keep everything honest. You’re not getting that in certain parts of the world.”