AP PHOTOS: 1,000 days of war in Ukraine captured in images
AP PHOTOS: 1,000 days of war in Ukraine captured in images
Ukrainian emergency employees and police officers evacuate injured pregnant woman Iryna Kalinina, 32, from a maternity hospital that was damaged by a Russian airstrike in Mariupol, Ukraine, March 9, 2022. The baby was born dead and a half-hour later, Iryna died too. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
An explosion erupts from an apartment building at 110 Mytropolytska St., after a Russian army tank fired on it in Mariupol, Ukraine, Friday, March 11, 2022. On the 7th floor of the building two elderly women Lydya and Nataliya were stuck in their apartment because they couldn’t come down to the shelter. They were killed by this explosion. Two heavily burned bodies were buried by neighbors in front of the building. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka
An elderly woman is assisted while crossing the Irpin river on an improvised path under a bridge, that was destroyed by Ukrainian troops designed to slow any Russian military advance, while fleeing the town of Irpin, Ukraine, March 5, 2022. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)
Dead bodies are put into a mass grave on the outskirts of Mariupol, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 9, 2022 as people cannot bury their dead because of the heavy shelling by Russian forces. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Ukrainian emergency employees and police officers evacuate injured pregnant woman Iryna Kalinina, 32, from a maternity hospital that was damaged by a Russian airstrike in Mariupol, Ukraine, March 9, 2022. The baby was born dead and a half-hour later, Iryna died too. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Ukrainian emergency employees and police officers evacuate injured pregnant woman Iryna Kalinina, 32, from a maternity hospital that was damaged by a Russian airstrike in Mariupol, Ukraine, March 9, 2022. The baby was born dead and a half-hour later, Iryna died too. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
An explosion erupts from an apartment building at 110 Mytropolytska St., after a Russian army tank fired on it in Mariupol, Ukraine, Friday, March 11, 2022. On the 7th floor of the building two elderly women Lydya and Nataliya were stuck in their apartment because they couldn’t come down to the shelter. They were killed by this explosion. Two heavily burned bodies were buried by neighbors in front of the building. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka
An explosion erupts from an apartment building at 110 Mytropolytska St., after a Russian army tank fired on it in Mariupol, Ukraine, Friday, March 11, 2022. On the 7th floor of the building two elderly women Lydya and Nataliya were stuck in their apartment because they couldn’t come down to the shelter. They were killed by this explosion. Two heavily burned bodies were buried by neighbors in front of the building. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka
Relatives and friends pay their last respects to Liza, a 4-year-old girl killed by a Russian attack, during a mourning ceremony in an Orthodox church in Vinnytsia, Ukraine, Sunday, July 17, 2022. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
Ukrainian servicemen of the Azov brigade light flares during the funeral ceremony of fallen comrade Ihor Kusochek, in Travkine, Chernihiv region, Ukraine, Friday Oct. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
A Ukrainian serviceman in protective suit demonstrates grenade launcher to women during a training course for national resistance for local population in Kharkiv region, Ukraine, Friday, Sept.13, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrii Marienko)
A shell-shocked Ukrainian soldier of the Azov brigade sits at the stabilization point after arriving from the front line, near Toretsk, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
A thousand days of war in Ukraine have been captured in stunning images, many of them horrifying, some of them poignant, others uplifting.
Since Russia’s all-out invasion of its smaller neighbour on Feb. 24, 2022, Europe’s biggest armed conflict since World War II has cost tens of thousands of lives on both sides. Thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the fighting. Others have lost their family, their homes and their livelihoods.
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The Russian military has repeatedly used missiles, drones and artillery to blast civilian targets across Ukraine with devastating consequences. The loss of homes and possessions, snatched away in the blink of an eye, is traumatic.
Across Ukrainian towns and cities, communities are suddenly and bewilderingly pitched into unfamiliar circumstances.
The Russian destruction of Ukraine’s public infrastructure, including the national power grid, adds to the feeling of vulnerability. At night, candles may provide the only light.
Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have evacuated and migrated abroad.
Those who stayed often had to improvise. That sometimes meant digging mass graves, such as in the besieged port city of Mariupol in 2022 where heavy Russian shelling prevented proper burials and brought despair.
The dreadful toll of war is illustrated in funerals held for soldiers and for civilians, including children, and the grief of those attending them.
For almost three years, Associated Press photographers have been on the ground documenting the war.
The AP photograph of a wounded pregnant woman being carried on a gurney through devastated Mariupol, only for her and her baby to die shortly afterward, is one of the war’s most distressing and heartrending images.
In 2023, the AP won two Pulitzer Prizes for its coverage of the war in Ukraine, earning recognition for its breaking news photography as well as the prestigious public service award for its exclusive dispatches from Mariupol.
Earlier this year, AP video journalist Mstyslav Chernov’s “20 Days in Mariupol,” a harrowing first-person account of the early days of Russia’s invasion, won the best documentary Oscar.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine