BuzzFeed Reporter Kidnapped in Ukraine: 'I Was Pretty Freaked Out'

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A Ukrainian soldier stands guard at a road leading into Slovyansk, eastern Ukraine, Friday, May 2, 2014.

Image: Darko Vojinovic/Associated Press

By Brian Ries2014-05-02 17:36:46 UTC

Mike Giglio is back where he started.

BuzzFeed’s mideast correspondent, who is reporting from embattled cities across eastern Ukraine, is talking to Mashable on Friday afternoon from his hotel in Donetsk — not in Sloviansk where he intended to be.

The Ukrainian military was set to begin an assault on a pro-Russian stronghold in Sloviansk, but panicking militants stationed at a checkpoint outside of town had other plans.

See also: For Pro-Russia Militants, Ukraine's Journalists Are Bargaining Chips

Giglio left his hotel in Donetsk early on Friday after receiving a text from a source saying there was action in Sloviansk. Shortly after departing with driver and translator in tow, Giglio confronted a Ukrainian army checkpoint and was waved through. They then encountered a pro-Russia militant checkpoint, whose militia members asked a few questions before letting them pass. Up next was a third checkpoint, this one a bit closer to the city. That's when they were told to pull over to the side of the road.

“They basically didn’t know what to do with us. Were they supposed to let journalists through or what?” says Giglio of the pro-Russian men at the checkpoint. “They called their superiors, and after about 20, 30 minutes the militia guys came and said they would take us to local military headquarters.”

It was not up for negotiation.


Giglio and his crew had their flak jackets and helmets stolen by those manning the road and were taken to a local town where militants had occupied a government building.

That’s when they met up with a group of 12 to 15 people — mostly kidnapped journalists and their staffs — who were sitting quietly in a hijacked news organization’s minivan with towels over their faces and masking tape around their heads.

Among them was CBS News’s Clarissa Ward and reporters from Sky News. (Ward told her story to CBS This Morning.)

“They drove us to a town called Horlivka, which they consider to be their military headquarters, to a local security building that they’ve occupied,” Giglio tells Mashable. "The ride took about 45 mins or an hour because they were taking backroads and all these roundabout ways. They had to stop and ask directions."

Each time the van pulled up to another pro-Russia checkpoint, the journalists' kidnappers called ahead to gain permission to pass through, illustrating, Giglio says, that there is no clear line of command amongst the groups.

“As we pulled up you could hear the guys cocking their guns,” he says, “so they are mutually suspicious. There’s not very good coordination going on here.”

Eventually, they arrived at their destination.

“They brought us to this place and they kinda perp-walked us from the van to the bus,” Giglio says. He describes the building as "some kind of concrete black building" with a dirt floor that was more than likely used for storage.

"We had to put our hands on the wall and stand against the wall. One journalist started crying, saying, 'Don’t hurt us.' And they yelled at us, roughed us up, and they took all of our belongings.”

It was scary, Giglio says, but he noted how his kidnappers kept saying they would soon return his things, which he saw as a good sign. “I don’t think al Qaeda tells you you’re going to get your wallet back,” he says.

The kidnappers then conducted what Giglio calls a “Mickey Mouse interrogation” in which they asked each journalist to name the capital of the country listed on their passports.

“You’re Michael?” they asked him. “Where are you from?”

"USA," Giglio responded.

“What’s the capital?" they asked. "Washington,” he said.

“Then they made me pronounce, ‘garden,’” Giglio says.

Giglio says he has no idea why they would ask him to say that word, but he figures, “Trying to judge if my pronunciation was American?”

A woman interrogated the group — she was the only one there who spoke fluent English — and had the captors beat up a British journalist who she didn’t believe to be from London.

A translator with the kidnapped journalists told them he overheard a conversation discussing keeping them as hostages. Giglio thought a likely scenario would be one in which they would keep them hostage and eventually try to negotiate an exchange.

But then, as they stood in the shack with its dirt floor among men with guns, the mood suddenly changed.

"At some point they decided they would let us go," Giglio says. "They got apologetic, took our blindfolds off, gave us our stuff back, made us count our money to make sure if anything was missing, gave us tea — we had an awkward little tea party — and they came over and tried to explain what had happened."

What happened, Giglio says, was the militia guys panicked.

“There’s an operation under way, none of them knew what to do, all of them were very angry, and it was all very heat of the moment," he says. "They took us to the people who were actually in charge and got a more level-headed person involved, and they released us.”

Giglio describes the man in charge as a local businessmen. The men who took him, he says, were pretty much the same as the guy who runs your local corner store.

“All the journalists, me and at least one other, had an invitation from the People’s Mayor’s press secretary. We were supposed to have people call her, which has worked in the past, but they just say, ‘It’s military now.’ Everyone is freaking out, so obviously he’s not in control. They said, “The People’s Mayor? What does that even mean?’”

But Giglio, who was detained in Egypt in August 2013 while reporting on the Muslim Brotherhood crackdown, is more ticked off than shaken. He didn’t get to the heart of the story.

“Egypt was horrifying, but at least I was in the middle of the story when I was arrested there,” Giglio says. “This just sucks. I didn’t get to Sloviansk."

Topics: buzzfeed, Journalist, Media, U.S., US & World, World