Chris Sampson is the editor-in-chief of National Security Media, a news project based in Ukraine that produces original content.
Editor-in-chief of NatSecMedia. Host of The Wire Tap on Substack. Ukrainian military press accreditation. Co-author of Hacking ISIS.
Author, journalist, photographer, filmmaker. Based in Kyiv since January 31, 2022 — a few weeks before the full-scale invasion began. Still here. The work is the war: the people living it, the politics shaping it, the information campaigns distorting it.
On the Ground
The work is rooted in presence. Not presence as a credential — presence as the condition of the work itself.
In Bucha, days after the Russians withdrew, walking streets where bodies were still in the road — some with hands bound, some shot at close range — and taking the meticulous notes that would become the record. In Izyum after liberation, delivering supplies and documenting the graves. Through Kherson Oblast after occupation — Vysokopillia, Antonivka, the towns that endured twice over, first Russian soldiers and then the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam. In Kyiv during the 447-projectile assault on the energy grid and nuclear infrastructure, watching the strike patterns from a rooftop and writing down what they revealed.
The daily dispatches — written through blackouts, written during drone attacks, written on day 1,400 and day 1,450 and every day in between — are not coverage from a distance. They are the record of someone who chose to stay and keep watching.
Reporting has also included interviews with Mustafa Dzhemilev, the legendary leader of the Crimean Tatar people, conducted in Bucha during the early documentation of Russian atrocities. Coverage of POW families rallying at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv. The Olenivka prison massacre anniversary, when relatives gathered not only to mourn but to remind the world that hundreds remain in Russian captivity. Collaboration with NGOs, Ukrainian officials, and coordination headquarters working on behalf of civilian captives and defenders.
Information Warfare
Russia does not fight only with missiles. The propaganda campaign against Ukraine predates the full-scale invasion by more than a century — and the modern infrastructure of it runs through the Orthodox Church, diaspora influence networks, social media ecosystems, Western media proxies, and compliant politicians in European capitals and Washington.
Covering that campaign is inseparable from covering the war. The FrolovLeaks archive — 17 gigabytes of Kremlin correspondence documenting how Russian intelligence coordinated with church hierarchs and political operators — required the same kind of sourcing and analysis as any frontline report. So did tracing how Starlink satellite connectivity was enabling Russian drone strikes with jam-resistant precision that Ukrainian electronic warfare couldn’t degrade, while SpaceX publicly denied any Russian access. So did documenting how Russia weaponizes INTERPOL’s red notice system against Ukrainians who fought back. So did mapping the harvest: Russia’s diaspora influence operations across Europe, seeding grievance and historical revisionism into communities far from the front.
The architecture of this — the forums, the channels, the coordinated amplification, the construction of false legitimacy — was already familiar from years spent tracking ISIS and Al Qaeda online. The targets changed. The methods did not.
American Accountability
Before leaving for Kyiv, years were spent documenting the convergence of forces that produced January 6, 2021. An internal report was written in June 2020 identifying the groups most likely to attack the election. Through the summer and fall, data was gathered night by night — terabytes of it — tracking the online channels, the funding networks, the political coordination. When the Capitol was attacked, none of it was surprising. When the prosecutions came, the work was already there.
That accountability beat did not end at the departure gate. Trump’s systematic betrayal of Ukraine — the pattern across his first term and into his return, the gutting of sanctions, the Witkoff shadow diplomacy, the OFAC waiver authorizing Indian refiners to purchase Russian oil while American bombs were falling on Iran — is the same story with higher stakes and cleaner evidence. The Mueller memorial. The Jack Smith testimony. The Capitol Police officer who stood in the tunnel and thought he might die. These are not separate threads. They are the same thread.
The earlier chapter — CheneyWatch, the Bush-era accountability work, the torture memos, the rendition cases, the Guantanamo hearings, the years of interviewing Col. Morris Davis, Joseph Margulies, Brig. Gen. David Irvine, and others who were willing to put their names on the record — established the baseline: power that operates without accountability does not self-correct. It escalates. That lesson has proven durable.
Lead researcher on several New York Times bestselling books covering Trump, Russia, Putin’s ambitions in Europe, the Manafort/Yanukovych sabotage of Ukraine, and the American insurrection.
Bandura Quartet, L’viv, Ukraine April 2022
Culture Under Fire
Understanding what Russia is trying to erase requires understanding what it is targeting.
The kobzar tradition — the blind itinerant bards who carried Ukrainian oral history through centuries of suppression, whose instruments were smashed and whose practitioners were killed by the thousands under Stalin. The bandura heard for the first time on Maidan, played by a duo under the main thoroughfare in Kyiv, weeks after arriving in the country. The Crimean Tatar culture that survived deportation and occupation and continues to survive in diaspora. The poets whose words became contraband — Vasyl Stus, whose voice Russia could not silence even in the Perm-36 labor camp.
Cultural reporting is not a separate beat from the war reporting. It is the other half of the same question: what is this war actually about, and what does the world lose if Ukraine loses it?
Where It Started
Journalism began at Pacifica Radio’s KPFT 90.1 FM in Houston in the late 1990s. As executive producer and host of Music Beyond Borders — a daily two-hour program that ran from 1999 to 2007 — the work was treating world music as a serious lens on world events. That meant interviews with Ustad Zakir Hussain, Simon Shaheen, Omar Faruk Tekbilek, Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, and many others who were not just artists but carriers of living traditions. It meant news specials on Tibet, Haiti, and other crises at a time when those stories were not getting the attention they warranted. It meant learning, above everything else, how to listen.
That training — not as a credential but as a method — runs through every piece of work that followed. Counterterrorism research. The accountability beat. The frontline reporting. The long-form investigations. Listening to what is actually being said rather than what is convenient to hear remains the most useful thing learned in twenty-six years of this work.
Music remains a serious practice: Indian classical percussion, frame drums, traditions from across Central Asia, West Africa, and the Middle East, studied with masters across many years. A student of the work, not a collector of it.
The work has been covered by and quoted in the Washington Post, Newsweek, The Daily Beast, BBC, and Snopes. Television appearances include MSNBC, BBC, CTV, GCTV, and CheddarTV; radio on BBC, LBC, KPFT, and Canadian Broadcasting. Presentations on terrorism ecosystems, Russian information warfare, and the Ukraine war have been delivered to organizations and law enforcement agencies across the United States and Europe.
PHOTOJOURNALISM
As a photojournalist, Sampson has documented protests, local feature stories, and most recently, the war in Ukraine. He is currently based in Ukraine, capturing footage of the war’s devastation and the local culture. His photography can be viewed on his website and Instagram.
sampsonshots.com
Bucha, Ukraine April 2022
PASSION FOR MUSIC & CULTURE
Beyond his dedication to news coverage, Sampson is a fervent admirer of music and culture from diverse corners of the globe. He has immersed himself in the study and performance of music alongside musicians from numerous countries and traditions. From India, Morocco, and South Africa to Uzbekistan, Turkey, and beyond, he has engaged in performances, recordings, and explorations of these rich cultural heritages, always with a keen eye on the stories behind the music. Sampson is particularly esteemed for his expertise in Indian classical percussion and frame drums from various traditions including personal study with some of the finest artists in these fields.
He has served as executive producer for numerous music concerts and instructional materials featuring esteemed artists from these cultural backgrounds. With a penchant for playing a wide array of instruments from around the world, Sampson continues to expand his personal collection with new discoveries.
In the brief journey of life, we are granted a singular opportunity to exist and experience. Simply hoping to be entertained by the world overlooks the profound beauty of our potential to contribute to the cosmic tapestry. It is a humbling realization, one that fills us with deep gratitude for the gift of existence itself. So, I offer my sincerest gratitude to the Universe for the precious chance to partake in the act of creation.
