- Title: Ukrainian YouTuber switches from travel videos to documenting country at war
- Date: 3rd June 2022
- Summary: KYIV, UKRAINE (JUNE 1, 2022) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) UKRAINIAN YOUTUBER, ANTON PTUSHKIN, SAYING: "I’m just a travel guy. I was not into politics at all. But on 24th of February, politics ended. This is not politics, this is actually war, and people are dying. And of course you cannot be silent. You have to say something."
- Embargoed: 17th June 2022 14:13
- Keywords: Anton Ptushkin Anton somewhere Instagram Kyiv Luhansk Russian invasion Twitter Ukraine YouTube blogger social media travel blogger videos war
- Location: VARIOUS
- City: VARIOUS
- Country: Ukraine
- Topics: Conflicts/War/Peace,Europe
- Reuters ID: LVA002214301062022RP1
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: To his millions of followers, Ukrainian YouTuber Anton Ptushkin may be best known for travel videos featuring mountain roads and seascapes.
Now, he's using his platform to tell people in the West about life in Ukraine during the Russian invasion.
"I’m just a travel guy. I was not into politics at all," said Ptushkin, 38, whose main YouTube channel has more than five million followers.
"But on 24th of February, politics ended. This is not politics, this is actually war, and people are dying. And of course you cannot be silent."
Speaking from his studio in Kyiv on Wednesday (June 1), Ptushkin, who was born in Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, said he tried to appeal to his Russian audience in two separate videos.
He said about half of the followers on his main YouTube channel, which now has a following of more than five and a half million, were from Russia.
"They gained a lot of views but the effectiveness of this video was really small," he said.
So, he switched his focus to his English YouTube channel called "Anton somewhere", to appeal to people in the West instead.
"I believe that people in the West, they can change something because there is democracy in the West," he said.
"And people, I don't know, maybe they can watch some of my episodes and ask their elected officials to maybe to help Ukraine somehow. And that will help."
Instead of featuring destinations like Norway, Namibia and the Transfagarasan highway in Romania, Ptushkin now posts videos about life during the war in Ukraine.
He said travelling is about emotion and he also tries to convey emotion in his new videos "because personal stories always matter."
As of Thursday (June 2), Ptushkin's 22-minute video entitled 'How Kyiv lived under the Russian siege' had garnered nearly one and a half million views on YouTube.
Scenes from the video include Ptushkin speaking with his mother, who he said left Luhansk in 2014, and visiting a children's hospital in Kyiv.
"I hope this is important for someone in the West also, because they can understand what it feels like to be in the country fighting with the enemy in 2022. It's madness, actually," Ptushkin said.
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