CBS News reporter Aidan Stretch prepares for a live report from Ukraine, where he’s been based for the past six months covering the war.
Aidan Stretch
Sitting in a coffee shop in Kyiv last November, CBS News reporter Aidan Stretch was catching up with a prominent Ukrainian journalist and her husband, a special forces veteran, when their phones simultaneously lit up with breaking news alerts.
Push notifications were announcing a supposed diplomatic breakthrough: President Trump’s envoys had helped draft a peace plan that would require Ukraine to give up territory in exchange for a ceasefire. Sitting in that coffee shop, as the trio tried to make sense of the early reports, Stretch asked whether they thought Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy might go for it.
“What do you mean Zelenskyy?” his journalist friend shot back with a surprised look. “It is not his decision. That deal would be invalid the second it was signed. People would be out on the streets immediately.”
Her husband nodded along, adding: “The military guys would not go for it. Tell them to go home after fighting since 2014 for that land? No way.”
Stretch, one of the first hires made by CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss after she joined the network, told me that exchange stands out for him as one of the defining moments of his first six months reporting from Ukraine.
The life of a foreign correspondent
“No one in Ukraine believes this war will end in a final, neat settlement, establishing peace between Ukraine and Russia for years to come,” Stretch said. “Most Ukrainians I’ve met see themselves as having been at war with Russia since 2014 and assume they’ll be in some sort of conflict with them for their lifetimes.”
Six months into his Ukraine assignment, a typical workday for Stretch might begin in a coffee shop just like the one that day in Kyiv, with a pair of headphones draped around his shoulders and a table crowded with the tools of a modern foreign correspondent. His ever-present gadgets include two iPhones—one personal, one for work—a LiveU setup for TV hits, microphones for social video, an earpiece for broadcasts and a tripod.
He might also step outside to record videos for social media, then go live for CBS audiences before heading to another interview or catching the metro across the city.
Back home in Kyiv, he crams Ukrainian language lessons and research and writing in between Zoom meetings with colleagues in London (2 hours behind Kyiv) and New York (7 hours behind Kyiv). He regularly writes and broadcasts near a church in the city center that serves as an eye-catching backdrop for live shots, and in the evenings he’ll often meet up with Ukrainian or expat friends at a restaurant or bar.
“A veteran journalist told me when I moved here that I should be meeting 10-15 new people each week,” he said. “When I’m in Kyiv, where I live, I shape my days around these meetings—bouncing between cafes, often traveling with a tripod and extra phone that I set up to go live on CBS’ shows when news is breaking or I have a new piece of reporting to speak about.
“I also try to travel around the country as much as possible to understand and report on developments outside the capital. I probably spend as much time working on Ukrainian Railways’ sleeper trains as I do in coffee shops or at home.”
It’s that sort of multitasking that caught Weiss’ attention when she recruited Stretch, who’s also written for The Kyiv Independent and The Free Press, the outlet Weiss co-founded before taking over at CBS News.
His hire also represents the other side of Weiss’ arrival at CBS, where much of the attention so far has centered on the upheaval surrounding her tenure rather than the journalists she’s brought in.
During her first CBS newsroom town hall, Weiss introduced Stretch as the kind of “Swiss Army knife” journalist she wants to build the network around—her way of describing reporters equally comfortable writing, reporting, analyzing and speaking directly to audiences across platforms.
Reporting from Ukraine for CBS News
Stretch has spent the past six months doing exactly that, reporting on everything from Ukrainian children who’ve been kidnapped into Russia to Ukrainian attacks inside Moscow and the effects they’re having on Russia’s air defenses. On social media, he regularly distills military developments into concise explainer videos, like one currently pinned to his Instagram feed that details how Ukrainian forces detect and disrupt the control signals of incoming drones.
Stretch also participated in a gaggle with Zelenskyy earlier this week, asking about the last time he spoke with Trump’s envoys—prompting Zelenskyy to urge them to come to the region. That came after Stretch had spent the previous night in a bomb shelter after covering a new Russian attack on Kyiv.
“The most difficult thing to communicate to viewers is daily life in Kyiv,” Stretch said. “In some ways, it’s almost disturbingly normal. It’s a beautiful European city where people are out enjoying cafes and bars until around 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. before the curfew begins at midnight and everyone has to go inside.
“But fairly frequently—these days, about once every week or two—there’s a massive Russian bombardment of the city. During these nights, no one gets any sleep and, honestly, it’s terrifying. Even missile impacts that are miles away can shake your building or break windows or trigger car alarms nearby. Life doesn’t stop. People are up at 8 a.m. the next day to go to work. But it definitely leaves a mark the more you experience.”