Olga Safina is founder of Be First Communications and Tetiana Atadzhanova is head of corporate communications at Acino.
We both came into communications in peacetime. We learned from the same textbooks, the ones where a crisis has a beginning, a stabilization and an end. Where there’s time to draft a statement, check the wording, run it past legal.
Then the full-scale invasion of Ukraine started, and most of what we were taught turned out to rest on an assumption that no longer holds.
I spoke with Tetiana Atadzhanova, head of corporate communications at Acino, who stayed and kept working in Ukraine. I left, and now work in the U.S. Each of us is walking her own path now, and I wanted to compare what we’ve each taken from this.
This is a conversation about the craft: what collapsed in classical communications, what turned out to matter more than we thought, and what any of it offers people working in calmer conditions.
The first days
Safina: The first rule of crisis communications is don’t panic, follow the plan. What happens when the situation goes beyond any plan?
Atadzhanova: Let me answer this not as a communicator, but just as a person. In those first days we lost all of our professionalism. We were just people, and only after that PR specialists, managers, anything. And I remember it clearly: words explain, they structure, they help people understand what’s happening — and here was something you simply had no words for.
But at a certain point I understood the exact opposite. Words hadn’t lost their meaning. They had become far more responsible. Because people in a crisis are looking for answers to very simple questions: what’s happening, what do I do, what comes next, who do I trust. And honestly, back then I wasn’t thinking about the profession at all. I just wanted to survive as a human being.
Safina: I remember that state. From February to May 2022 I was at a company where we were evacuating staff and communicating with the team, partners, media, contractors and clients all at once. Lives and the business were both on the line.
There was a day when I had to tell the team that our colleague had been killed — a direct missile hit on his apartment. He was 27. He left a wife and a small child. And on that same day: tell the team we keep working, that we still have to deliver for our clients, and at the same time keep evacuating, keep organizing.
No textbook prepares you for a day when you have to do both. What’s left is facts, honesty, and getting your priorities in the right order.
What collapsed
Safina: Looking back — what didn’t hold up?
Atadzhanova: What collapsed was the illusion that communication can be managed separately from reality. I spent a long time doing crisis communications. We think about the messages we need to land, about reputational risk. None of that has gone away. But war showed very quickly: if there are no actions behind your words, communication doesn’t work. You can’t tell people “we care about you” if they don’t see the work.
You can’t say “we’re open” while hiding the inconvenient information. What’s left is speed, honesty, empathy and regularity. And that’s when I understood it’s sometimes better to say “we don’t know what to do next” than to invent a beautiful answer.
Safina: For us that became physical. When Kyiv ran out of fuel, and some of our staff needed medication and their families needed food, we took the company Teslas and set up deliveries and shifts. We built a hotline chat where we coordinated evacuation, housing, cars, fuel for anyone leaving the dangerous areas.
And that’s how we communicated with employees and partners: we’re here. We accept reality and we act accordingly.
We didn’t say “we’re with you.” We did it — and communication became the visible form of the action. Which is the clearest illustration of your point. Reputation isn’t created by communication. It’s created by how the organization behaves. Communication makes that behavior visible and legible.
Trust gets tested when you have something to lose
Atadzhanova: Trust is built in all sorts of situations, but more often than not it isn’t built when things are going well. When everything’s fine, it’s easy to be open, human, to say the right things. Real reputation gets tested at the moment you have something to lose. Will you tell the truth that’s inconvenient for you? Will you face people before you have all the answers? Can you admit your mistake?
People sense falseness far better than we sometimes assume. Today I believe much less in perfect, polished communication, and much more in the consistency between what a company says and what it does. It isn’t what we tell people about ourselves. It’s the experience people get from dealing with us.
How to speak before you have answers
Atadzhanova: After a serious crisis there’s always the question of how you talk to people when you don’t have all the answers yet. Sometimes you badly want to wait — for more information, for everyone to verify everything, until you can say something good.
But silence in a crisis gets filled. Often with fear. Very often with rumors and guesses.
So the right decision for me was: say what we know for certain right now, clearly separate it from what we don’t know yet and come back with updates on a regular basis.
Safina: In peacetime communications we tend to do the opposite — polish the phrasing, add adjectives, avoid negative symbols. As positive reinforcement that works. But in a critical situation I’m always for fewer words and more facts.
When the crisis doesn’t end
Safina: The classic model is beginning, stabilization, end. What do you do when year five arrives and the crisis hasn’t read the textbook?
Atadzhanova: That’s just us. Sometimes it feels like we’ve hit bottom, there’s something to push off from and start climbing back. But what do you do when for five years one crisis layers onto another, and businesses have to operate in the language of emergencies?
It simply becomes noise. So you have to separate: where it’s a genuine emergency and people need a short, clear instruction; where they need an explanation; where it’s normal corporate life; and where it’s better not to communicate at all. Because that’s another lesson of the war — not every event requires a communications campaign.
And for a comms team this matters too. We can’t live on adrenaline permanently. There have to be scenarios, roles, ready algorithms, alternative channels. Then when a crisis hits, you’re not thinking from scratch.
Optimism and tragedy
Safina: How do you stay honest about bad news without leaving people in despair?
Atadzhanova: I’m not sure my job as a communicator right now is to give people optimism. It matters more not to take away their footing. Those are different things.
If something bad happened, don’t pretend it isn’t that bad. People are asking: what do we do next? My internal rule is to state the facts first, then the action we’re taking, then what people can count on going forward.
Hope in communications, for me, isn’t a promise that everything will be fine. It’s knowing what to do next.
What to take from this if you work in calmer conditions
Atadzhanova: I don’t think we can teach anyone — everyone has their own context. But our experience shows things that aren’t in the classical textbooks.
That a crisis doesn’t pass in 70 hours. That the communicator has to sit closer to where decisions are made, because you can’t explain clearly what you learn about last. That fast, honest, imperfect communication beats a flawless text three days later.
And for anyone who tomorrow has to speak to people in a real catastrophe: think less about what we need to say and more about what people need to know right now. What happened? Am I safe? What do I do? Where do I get the next update?
What never to do: don’t lie to calm people down. Short term you might lower the anxiety. But once people realize they were misled, they won’t believe you in the next crisis — the one where it actually matters.
Afterword
We’re used to everything having a beginning and an end. Even the hardest crisis. All our models are built on that assumption.
Ukraine showed it can be otherwise, and learned to work inside a reality it didn’t choose. For anyone working in calmer conditions, that’s the part worth taking: any prolonged uncertainty — market, regulatory, industry-wide — asks you not to wait it out, but to accept the new reality and act inside it. Even when you don’t want to agree with it.
5 things to take away:
- Reputation is created by how the organization behaves. Communication makes that behavior visible — it can’t substitute for it.
- Silence in a crisis gets filled, usually with fear and rumor. Say what you know, name what you don’t, come back with updates.
- Not every event needs a communications campaign. In a prolonged crisis, sorting emergencies from explanations from normal corporate life is the job.
- Your role isn’t to supply optimism. It’s to avoid taking away people’s footing: state the fact, name the action, say what they can count on.
- Never lie to reduce anxiety. You spend the trust you’ll need in the crisis that actually matters.
