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DB Dylan Burns On Preston Stewart

“I've seen journalists get attacked while clearly marked as press. I've seen civilians get killed for no reason whatsoever. … Talking about dressing up as press is just like a different costume in some video game to a lot of drone pilots. Not all Russian drone pilots… but a lot.”

Preston Stewart · Policy · November 2026

“I've seen journalists get attacked while clearly marked as press. I've seen civilians get killed for no reason whatsoever. … Talking about dressing up as press is just like a different costume in some video game to a lot of drone pilots. Not all Russian drone pilots… but a lot.” — Dylan Burns, Preston Stewart

Context

Asked whether he wears press markings at forward positions, he says he does, to uphold the profession's standards, but that they offer little protection from drone operators.

Transcript

Preston Stewart
Dylan Burns

…I more comfortable going in on foot. And when we went in on foot, we had probably at least over a dozen experiences, interactions with drones zooming around us or directly trying to target us. And that was just one day of walking into and out of that axis. So it's probably 25, 30 kilometers.

Preston Stewart

Do you make yourself known as press? Like, do you wear a press badge when you're doing this?

Dylan Burns

…worker killed there. Journalists killed there. Good luck. And that's just very, it is just the threat is very, very present there. It's very difficult to operate. So I can wear press identifiers and I do. I'm not going to wear camouflage. I'm not going to decorate myself like the Ukrainian armed forces because of the law and I want to uphold the law. But ultimately, none of that matters at all. I've seen journalists get attacked while clearly marked as press. I've seen civilians get killed for no reason whatsoever. Grandmas on their morning shuffle through the neighborhood get blown up in Herson. It is very, very, very common. It is kind of the name of the game. So like talking about like dressing up as press is just like, it's just like a different costume in some video game to a lot of drone pilots. Not all, not all Russian drone pilots. I don't want to like demonize like the Russian soul in and of…

Preston Stewart

It's such a weird dynamic because when you think about, I mean, press in a war zone. And to be, for everyone listening, and I know who you said, you weren't in Konostanthinivka, you were just around the sides of it. Like to be clear, kind of what he said is we weren't in the area that's borderline…

Dylan Burns

Yeah, no, I mean, I remember my first embed, I wore like reflective press press covering, and they were telling me, take that off. Are you crazy? You know, it'll bring attention to you. And the last thing you want to do is bring attention to yourself. So what I try to do is just try to be…

Preston Stewart

I mean, I'm all about more press being there, but at the same time, Dylan, like you're dodging FPBs, you know, like that is, it is crazy. It feels like magnitudes beyond. What our professional press corps has done in conflict zones recently. Like we had in Afghanistan, we had reporters in bed with…

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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