One year on from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Sun photographers share haunting & inspiring pics from bloody war
BRAVE Sun photographers have worked across Ukraine since the first day of Putin’s bloodbath to bring you the searing ground truth.
Together they recorded the horrors of Russia’s indiscriminate attacks, uplifting stories of survival, and Ukraine’s ferocious and spirited resistance.
They witnessed Russia’s scorched earth bombardments and the pluck of civilians left behind.
They recorded the human tide of refugees, cluster bomb war crime attacks and a forest of shallow mass graves.
We asked them to look back at the most memorable, inspiring and haunting pictures from the first year of the war.
PETER JORDAN
SOMETIMES war’s most awful moments bring out the best in people.
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A few times over the last 12 months I had to dive for cover from Russian rocket attacks. It was often terrifying.
But it was also when I photographed the most breathtaking moments of courage and kindness.
We spent weeks in northern Kharkiv when it was pounded by rockets and missiles daily. Often the Russians would hit an area, wait for the first responders to arrive, then hit it again.
I saw a volunteer try to douse 20ft flames with a pail of water on the tenth floor of an apartment block as a second wave of rockets exploded all around us.
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I saw Red Cross volunteer Denys Petrenko risk his life to shield a wounded woman on a pavement as more rockets screamed in.
Emergency staff routinely wore body armour and helmets because of the risk of these “doube-tap” strikes.
And I joined a tank crew in southern Kherson that charged into an open field and carried on firing at a Russian position, as shells hit closer and closer.
All these men and women embody Ukraine’s David and Goliath spirit.
IAN WHITTAKER
ON my first morning in Kyiv, I woke to the wail of air raid sirens and the sound of Putin’s new kamikaze drones, which the locals called mopeds because of the engine noise.
You kind of get used to the noise but the really scary thing was that the Iranian-built missiles often missed their targets – usually power and pumping stations – and hit apartment blocks, killing innocent people.
In the aftermath of one of these indiscriminate strikes we saw a rescue worker carrying a cat out of the debris.
Later we met a wounded British fighter, Shareef Amin, in hospital. Nicknamed Rambo by his mates, he had suffered two punctured lungs and shrapnel wounds to every limb.
He told a moving story of how a comrade had died next to him while under fire from Russian artillery.
It summed up the bravery and resilience of those fighting on the front line.
DARREN FLETCHER
THE Red Cross centre at Zahony in Hungary was part of a huge humanitarian response – generously backed by Sun readers – which had been set up at breakneck speed to care for Ukraine’s fleeing refugees.
It was heartwarming to see young Ukrainian mothers, like Tania and her five-month-old son Alexei, get a reassuring check-up, after they had travelled more than 1,000 miles to the safety of neighbouring Hungary.
Zahony was a railway town, and the sight of trainloads of refugees evoked haunting images of World War Two.
The local authority had turned a school into an emergency shelter for women and children.
It was a really well organised one-stop shop for women and kids to rest and refresh before their onward journey.
CHRIS EADES
SOME days in Ukraine are really tough – no heating in sub-zero temperatures, little food, having to use water from the river.
But strangely, it almost feels like a privilege to be here. To meet people who are living through this. To tell their stories.
The young couple saying farewell on the railway platform – him heading east to fight and her west, away from the bombs. Maybe never to see each other again.
A sea of crosses in a forest, telling the story of people who no longer have a voice.
The bomb squad risking their lives to clear booby traps in liberated areas.
And the weeping mother who had seen her son killed by a missile in their garden and who thanked us for visiting her so she could share her story with our readers.
That’s why we’re here – because some stories need telling – and sometimes pictures speak louder than bombs.
DOUG SEEBURG
I WAS in Kyiv on February 24, the day that Putin invaded. It was chaos.
Everyone thought Russia would take the city in a couple of days. It triggered an exodus of refugees.
We got stuck in a 300-mile traffic jam. A journey to Lviv that should have taken us seven hours took 31 hours, including a three-hour queue to get fuel.
We could hear the sound of fighting and explosions as we drove through Kyiv’s suburbs. It was a very anxious time.
At the railway station in Lviv it was a similar story – a tide of humanity overwhelming the platform as they all tried to flee the fighting.
Later, in Kharkiv – Ukraine’s second-largest city – I saw the utter devastation caused by Putin’s rocket bombardments which had turned tower blocks to rubble.
DAN CHARITY
THE sight of a three-year-old Ukrainian boy, Daniel Mikrukov, warming his hands on a fire in a makeshift refugee camp hammered home the suffering that Putin inflicted on innocents.
I was on the Poland border as tens of thousands of women and children poured out of Ukraine in desperate search of safety.
Daniel stared blankly into the flames, too young to understand the horror and injustice of what he was living through.
But the anguish was etched on adults’ faces.
Wives and mothers sobbed at leaving their menfolk behind to fight.
Families wrenched apart by war was heartbreaking to see.
