Photoreports

In Ukraine’s southern city of Kherson, civilians live beneath constant Russian drone attacks while trying to maintain ordinary life—whether it is going to the store or tending to their flowers.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion, women in Ukraine have continued to give birth, raise children, and find beauty in the midst of war. We spoke to five of them, here are their stories:

Forty years after the explosion at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, the zone is defined by the silence that remains after. Streets disappear into the forest, homes crumble into dust, and nature quietly takes back what was left behind. This is Chornobyl today.

A photoreport featuring five Russian POWs captured near Kupiansk shows how their condition and testimony reflect the system sustaining Russia’s war.

Long strips of white netting now cover nearly every road leading into Izium in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region. Thrown up in anticipation rather than as a reaction, Ukraine is preparing for Russia’s FPV drones, which are reaching deeper into territory once considered relatively safe behind the front.

Elite Ukrainian Special Operations soldiers gather in secret ceremonies during wartime to strengthen unity among troops fighting near and behind Russian lines.

For almost the entire month of March 2022, Russian forces held 368 people from Yahidne in a cramped basement as human shields. On March 30, they were freed. Four years later, as we visit the liberated village, they continue to tell their stories.

People have gathered, anxiously scanning the horizon for the buses carrying the released prisoners. For many, today is the day they will finally get to embrace their loved ones after years of Russian captivity.

Ukrainian troops on the Sumy front are battling subzero temperatures as low as –25°C (–13°F), where frozen trenches, failing engines, and constant drone surveillance reshape daily combat. Snow conceals artillery positions even as it risks exposing them, while frostbite and exhaustion shadow soldiers holding the line. In Ukraine’s winter war, endurance has become as decisive as firepower.

Every night and day, surgeons from the 3rd Army Corps’ 4th Separate Medical Battalion race against time to save the lives of fellow soldiers. Our team spent 24 hours with them, sharing their grueling routine and their relentless fight to deal with the gruesome consequences of war.

“This film roll is both a record and a reminder,” says one Ukrainian soldier. This is a story of how a camera carried in a pocket becomes a diary of dust, silence, work, people, and the moments that survive between missions.

As Russian missile and drone strikes plunged large parts of Kyiv into darkness and cold on the night of January 15, residents sheltering in municipal “Points of Invincibility” and inside unheated apartments, which they described as having gone days without electricity, water, or heating, rejected the idea that the pressure would force them to give in.

“As a kid, Christmas felt like a dream,” says Jag. Now, as I stand holding a small Christmas tree in front of my friend—dressed in full body armor, a man who hasn’t had a real holiday in years—he doesn’t even blink.