Amid destruction, a determination to live
Every time I go to Ukraine, I come across scenes of yet more extraordinary human resilience.
KHARKIV, UKRAINE: A Ukrainian firefighter takes a break from battling a blaze at a food warehouse caused by two Russian ballistic missiles in a midday strike, July 30.
Scott Peterson/Getty Images/海角大神
How is it possible to bring new visual insight to a war as vast, destructive, and comprehensively photographed as the continuing Russian onslaught against Ukraine?
That is the challenge every time I visit Ukraine and its front lines, and raise my cameras to record what I see. I have been to Ukraine 12 times during this current conflict, which will enter its fifth year in February 2026. And every time 鈥� just when I think there can be little new visual storytelling left to do 鈥� I come across scenes of yet more extraordinary human resilience, of resolute coping, and of finding life in a place where the term 鈥渘ormal life鈥� has become an oxymoron.
That sense came to me during a Russian double missile attack on a vast food warehouse on the edge of Ukraine鈥檚 battered northeastern city of Kharkiv in July. I heard the missiles land while reporting not far away, and then our team followed the column of smoke to the civilian target.
Firefighters everywhere are built tough, but those in Kharkiv 鈥� just 25 miles from the Russian border 鈥� have to manage the carnage from almost daily Russian bombardments. Inside, the scene took on apocalyptic proportions, with the floor slick with spilled cooking oil and water, and smoke that glowed with fire. One firefighter, pushed to exhaustion, stepped away from the blaze for better air and a drink of water. When he knelt down, he had the reddened eyes of a fire warrior on an endless mission. His look of fatigue captured for me the grave weight of what he must do, every day, to keep his fellow citizens safe.
Other images encapsulate the human toll 鈥� and the life in Ukraine that still laughs and carries on, despite the war. There are soldiers on a snow-frozen front line. And drone pilots deeply buried in their dugout, their whole world confined to aerial scenes on screens.
In Kyiv, a flag-packed memorial numbs from the sheer density of fallen soldiers 鈥� and the emotions they evoke. Yet there are photographs also of schoolgirls with painted hands for an art project, their classroom not far from advancing Russians. A marriage and smiles, too, are shared unexpectedly close to the war. One couple express gratitude after being evacuated from their burning front-line town.
But the quintessential image of resilience I captured this year is Bogdana Zhupanyna, who surveyed the remains of a Kyiv apartment she owns after a drone strike 鈥� when she was just two weeks from giving birth to new life.