Marichka Padalko is the subject of a documentary film
Marichka Padalko, host of the 1+1 and TSN’s United News marathon, appeared in a documentary about the war in Ukraine on one of the top-rated American TV channels, ABC, called Standing Strong: A Year of War in Ukraine. ABC is one of the top three family channels in the US, and its programs have become an integral part of the country’s pop culture.
The first meeting of the film crew with the TV presenter’s family took place on January 30, 2022. ABC correspondent Ian Pannel visited Marichka’s dacha and showed her a typical family weekend morning: the family was preparing breakfast, drinking tea and making waffles together. And they talked about the threat of a full-scale military attack by Russia, which could begin at any time, but which many in the world did not want to believe until the last moment. Although the host’s husband said that he had to be prepared for the worst-case scenarios, he enlisted in the Armed Forces in the summer of 2021.
Then Marichka Padalko spoke:
“You have to be strong for the sake of children and not show your fear.”
The next time an ABC correspondent visited Marichka Padalko was a year later, in January 2023, and it was an opportunity to use the example of a family they met before the war to show how the lives of many Ukrainians have changed. The TV presenter still lives with her son Mykhailo in Kyiv, her husband is serving at the front, and her two younger daughters are currently in the Czech Republic, in Prague. It was during a meeting with journalists that the lights were turned off in the apartment, and the TV presenter tells how she got used to blackouts. But these everyday things don’t scare her. The main thing is to defeat Putin and Russia.
“I’ve told so many stories about people, and I’m not used to being the main character in a story,” says the TV presenter at her workplace, the studio of the United News marathon, which has also been visited by an ABC film crew.
The American journalist also met with the TV presenter’s husband, Yegor Sobolev, who is now a junior sergeant in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. But he left for Prague when Marichka was seeing her two daughters, Maria and Kateryna. The girls told the camera how their lives have changed over the past three months since they left home without the constant care of their parents.
“After the filming, I asked Ian, as a TV reporter, if he was disappointed with the material: we didn’t cry, we didn’t complain about life. “It’s just the way Ukrainians hold on, and the world appreciates it,” Padalko said.
Photo: 1+1 press service
