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In Ukraine, of Love and War

Last year, FotoEvidence published the book Ukraine: A War Crime, which focused on the first year of the Russian invasion in Ukraine. This year, the publishing house is releasing a second volume titled Ukraine: Love+War, which looks at Russia’s aggression against Ukraine during the last decade, adding context to the current conflict.

On February 24, 2022, Russian forces invaded Ukraine, starting the largest armed conflict in Europe since World War II. The fighting has led to hundreds of thousands of soldiers killed on the battlefields, tens of thousands of civilian deaths, and has resulted in 3.7 internally displaced people in the country and 6.5 million refugees, according to UNHCR’s numbers as of February of 2024.

“It would be misleading to suggest that we’ve seen any improvement in the war situation. In reality, the conflict has only worsened,” says photojournalist Diego Ibarra Sánchez. “Thousands of civilians remain trapped in the crossfire, hundreds of schools lie in ruins, and there is no end in sight to this nightmare. Ukraine is confronting the tragedy of a lost generation, with its future being erased by war. In war, there are no winners—only victims, and the scars will endure for decades to come.”

Russia’s aggression towards Ukraine did not start in 2022. It actually began in 2014, a decade ago. It started with the Ukrainian Revolution, when after clashes between government forces and protestors forced the ousting of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, an ally of Russia. In response, pro-Russian separatists began fighting Ukrainian forces in the Donbas region of the country along the border of the two countries. Russia, using the power vacuum left from the revolution, occupied and then annexed Crimea while also backing the separatists’ movement.

After the clashes with the protesters riot police protected APC which takes away burned buses from the carriageway in the center of Kiev on Jan. 22, 2014. © Maxim Dondyuk
After the clashes with the protesters riot police protected APC which takes away burned buses from the carriageway in the center of Kiev on Jan. 22, 2014. © Maxim Dondyuk
A woman prays as she walks past a bulletin board showing portraits of those killed by invading Russian forces in Lviv, Ukraine, on 3.18.22. Ukraine mourns every loss, while recognizing that there are more to come. Two years later, it’s impossible to imagine what this board would look like if it reflected an updated death toll. © Alex Kent
A woman prays as she walks past a bulletin board showing portraits of those killed by invading Russian forces in Lviv, Ukraine, on 3.18.22. Ukraine mourns every loss, while recognizing that there are more to come. Two years later, it’s impossible to imagine what this board would look like if it reflected an updated death toll. © Alex Kent

In 2023, the FotoEvidence Book Award was used to publish Ukraine: A War Crime. The book looked at the war in the country since the Russian invasion in 2022. Using both photographs and text from the photographers themselves, it is a critical look at the situation on the ground in Ukraine.

This year, FotoEvidence is again turning to look at Ukraine with the 2024 book award Ukraine: Love+War. Containing 440 photographs and writings from more than 90 Ukrainian and international photojournalists from 23 countries, this book expands on the first and documents the impact of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine since 2014. It focuses on daily life and the disruption, displacement, destruction, and death visited on innocent Ukrainian civilians.

The photographs in the book tell the story of Ukraine from 2014 through the present day, which gives context to the current invasion. But they do not just show the fighting, the death, and the blood spilled in the conflict. They also explore the lives of those caught in the conflict: the civilians for whom daily life goes on surrounded by war. War does not stop the daily activities of civilians, but rather they are forced to change to what becomes a new normal under unbelievably harsh conditions and uncertainty.

“My initial challenge as the photo editor was how do we not repeat ourselves in this second book. The destruction, the fighting, the fears and the outcomes remain essentially the same. So we thought of trying to answer the question, ‘How do you live a life against the backdrop of war?’ That gave us a path forward,” tells Sarah Leen, the book’s Photo Editor. “But I was still struggling with structure for the images that would tell a story and engage the viewers. Then I had one of those in the shower moments when an idea just bursts into your head. The words ‘Love + War’ lit up in my brain and I thought, ’That’s it.’ Love does not die. It is the antidote to war.’ So that gave me a way to structure the images beginning with History, then War, then Love, then War again. It is softer than the first book but does not shy away from the tragedy of war. It is Love plus War. I am not sure if most people will notice that or not but that was how I saw it.”

Kiev, Ukraine. July 16th 2018. A group of young Ukrainian boys are being taught how to put a gas mask on by OLEKSIV Zabolotny, trainer of LIDER CAMP, a Ukraine's hyper-nationalist military summer Camp, outskirts Kiev. © Diego Ibarra Sánchez
Kiev, Ukraine. July 16th 2018. A group of young Ukrainian boys are being taught how to put a gas mask on by OLEKSIV Zabolotny, trainer of LIDER CAMP, a Ukraine’s hyper-nationalist military summer Camp, outskirts Kiev. © Diego Ibarra Sánchez
Elina with her mother in the apartment they live near Lviv, Feb 9, 2023. Elina and her family were forced to flee their home in Kharkiv due to the Russian bombardment. After arriving at a refugee camp in the west of the country, Elina was diagnosed with leukemia. She was the third child since the start of the conflict to undergo bone marrow surgery at Lviv. © Fabio Bucciarelli
Elina with her mother in the apartment they live near Lviv, Feb 9, 2023. Elina and her family were forced to flee their home in Kharkiv due to the Russian bombardment. After arriving at a refugee camp in the west of the country, Elina was diagnosed with leukemia. She was the third child since the start of the conflict to undergo bone marrow surgery at Lviv. © Fabio Bucciarelli
The Last Nurse on the Front Line. Trokhizbenka, Ukraine, February 8 and 9, 2022. © Timothy Fadek Vova drives a Lada Niva, a 4x4 Russian car that he and Lilia use to visit patients at home. Lilia Schwez lives in the eastern Ukrainian village of Trokhizbenka, on the front line with Russian-backed separatists. Her house is so close to the line of control, it can been seen from her back yard and the military checkpoint is a few yards from her front door. Since the war began in 2014, Lilia has seen her sister, who lives on the separatist side, only twice in 8 years. She has not seen her friends at all. She works in an under-staffed and under-funded clinic which serves five villages with a total of mostly elderly 1,365 residents. There is a dentist chair in one room, but there hasn’t been a dentist in years. Another room is for OB-GYN, but the doctor works only one day every week or two. The nearest hospital, in Severodonetsk, is an hour and a half away. So Lilia does housecalls. Vova drives her to her appointments. Trokhizbenka was a weekend getaway destination for urban dwellers. Small, dacha-type houses are everywhere. Before the war, the village was a relaxing place where people could do some gardening or just sit in the back yard to take in the fresh forest air. Lilia and her husband Vova moved from the nearby city Luhansk 15 years ago. “We planned to retire here.” Trokhizbenka is a village in the Luhansk area of eastern Ukraine, on the front line opposite the separatists of the LPR (Luhansk People’s Republic.)
The Last Nurse on the Front Line. Trokhizbenka, Ukraine, February 8 and 9, 2022. © Timothy Fadek
ALieutenant Arseniy, nicknamed “Schultz” marches forward with fellow Marines from the 36th Brigade during an initiation event near the town of Pokrovske in the Zaporizhzhia region. Before they are sent back to the frontlines to face Russian forces in the ongoing counteroffensive, Ukrainian Marines from the 36th Brigade took part in an initiation, enduring a grueling 7 kilometer run through obstacles and challenges simulating the real life and death struggles ahead. © David Guttenfelder for The New York Times
ALieutenant Arseniy, nicknamed “Schultz” marches forward with fellow Marines from the 36th Brigade during an initiation event near the town of Pokrovske in the Zaporizhzhia region. Before they are sent back to the frontlines to face Russian forces in the ongoing counteroffensive, Ukrainian Marines from the 36th Brigade took part in an initiation, enduring a grueling 7 kilometer run through obstacles and challenges simulating the real life and death struggles ahead. © David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

Photojournalist Natalie Keyssar arrived in Ukraine shortly after the full-scale invasion started on assignment for TIME magazine. It was her first time seeing a full-scale war, and what she saw shocked her. But among all the horrors of war, she found something else.

“I started gravitating towards photographing couples in love because I would see them everywhere, holding hands and kissing on benches, saying goodbye at train stations, trying to keep things calm for their kids at parks,” she recounts. “The energy around them was like a beacon of hope- the only thing in sight besides the ubiquitous Ukrainian flowers that consistently lifted the grim weight in the air from the west to the front lines. It helped me stay sane and understand the price of what Ukrainians were fighting for and what motivated them.”

Diego Ibarra Sánchez first visited Ukraine in 2018, having been working for over a decade focusing his work on documenting the devastating effects of war on education around the world. He spent two months in two separate trips tracing how the war devastated childhoods. When the war escalated in 2022, he returned to Ukraine to continue his work documenting the war’s impact on education.

“I aim to provoke thought and raise questions, urging the reader to consider the many ways war affects childhood. I want to make readers uncomfortable, to challenge them with questions rather than provide stereotypical answers through my pictures,” Sánchez says. “We’ve often constructed our understanding of war and pain through the lens of Hollywood, but this is the reality—it’s real: the pain, the loss, the smells, the destruction, and the overwhelming sense of hopelessness. Civilians bear a heavy burden, living under the constant threat of crossfire. They are not just numbers or content for television shows; their feelings are real, and so is their pain. Our duty is to document this reality, to create a memory. We are storytellers. We don’t save lives… Without pictures, there is no memory.”

A Ukrainian soldier returns injured from the war and proposes to his girlfriend © Carol Guzy
A Ukrainian soldier returns injured from the war and proposes to his girlfriend © Carol Guzy
August 1, 2023. Andriy Smolensky and Alina Smolenska pose for a photo outside of the Kyiv Hospital where he has just had his 16th surgery to repair his hearing after a mortar shell exploded I his face while leading a drone reconnaissance unit in Eastern Ukraine, destroying his hands and eyes and severely damaging his ears. As they begin the long journey towards recovery, Alina says she is more relieved that he is alive than anything, and Andriy expresses worry for the many young men who will meet fates like his or worse. © Natalie Keyssar
August 1, 2023. Andriy Smolensky and Alina Smolenska pose for a photo outside of the Kyiv Hospital where he has just had his 16th surgery to repair his hearing after a mortar shell exploded I his face while leading a drone reconnaissance unit in Eastern Ukraine, destroying his hands and eyes and severely damaging his ears. As they begin the long journey towards recovery, Alina says she is more relieved that he is alive than anything, and Andriy expresses worry for the many young men who will meet fates like his or worse. © Natalie Keyssar
Kidnapped in August 2014 by pro-Russian separatist fighters of the Vostok Battalion, Iryna Dogvan was beaten, tortured, and abused for nearly a week by a dozen men. A professional beautician, Iryna became a volunteer at the beginning of the war, delivering food and clothing to the Ukrainian army. Her humanitarian gesture was a crime, which led to five days in captivity, where pro-Russian soldiers planned to have her raped and used as fodder for fighters returning from the battle of Ilovaisk. Pressure following the publication of a photo in The New York Times showing Iryna as a crowd beat her led to her release. Today, Iryna presides over the association SEMA (Ukrainian Network of Women Victims of Sexual Violence in the Ongoing War). She continues to fight for the thousands of women in Ukraine who suffer the same Hell every day. © Gaelle Girbes
Kidnapped in August 2014 by pro-Russian separatist fighters of the Vostok Battalion, Iryna Dogvan was beaten, tortured, and abused for nearly a week by a dozen men. A professional beautician, Iryna became a volunteer at the beginning of the war, delivering food and clothing to the Ukrainian army. Her humanitarian gesture was a crime, which led to five days in captivity, where pro-Russian soldiers planned to have her raped and used as fodder for fighters returning from the battle of Ilovaisk. Pressure following the publication of a photo in The New York Times showing Iryna as a crowd beat her led to her release. Today, Iryna presides over the association SEMA (Ukrainian Network of Women Victims of Sexual Violence in the Ongoing War). She continues to fight for the thousands of women in Ukraine who suffer the same Hell every day. © Gaelle Girbes
Olena, call sign Pantera, police lieutenant of the Lyut battalion in Donetsk region on September 13. © Sasha Maslov for the Washington Post
Olena, call sign Pantera, police lieutenant of the Lyut battalion in Donetsk region on September 13. © Sasha Maslov for the Washington Post
Ukrainian soldier Artem Guz, 25, who was unable to speak or move his right arm and leg due to blast injuries caused by Russian shelling, lies in a bed at the Mechnikov Hospital in Ukraine’s eastern city of Dnipro, January 18, 2024. © Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York Times
Ukrainian soldier Artem Guz, 25, who was unable to speak or move his right arm and leg due to blast injuries caused by Russian shelling, lies in a bed at the Mechnikov Hospital in Ukraine’s eastern city of Dnipro, January 18, 2024. © Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York Times

But after two and half years, the war continues, as does the death and destruction that come with it. Russia continues its bloody push to capture more territory from Ukraine. Ukraine has started its own offensive, taking some ground from Russia inside their borders, but it has not given the Russian pause in their attacks. Earlier this month, a Russian missile strike killed more than 50 people and injured many more after hitting a military academy and a hospital, in one of the deadliest attacks in the war.

“The goal I think is always to make our understanding of war human, because anyone who has experienced it on a personal level must surely want it to stop above all else. So if you can make it personal, maybe people will understand that everyone’s suffering is our suffering, their burden, our burden and our responsibility to stop it is shared, indeed elevated, by being in the privileged position of living in a relatively rich and stable country,” Natalie Keyssar says. “I believe in this book- highlighting beauty and bonds through the work of so many photographers I profoundly admire and respect, because I think focusing on the moments of love and kinship is the most human illustration of what’s at stake in war and the best way to help others understand its cost.”

Drone view of ruined buildings and smoke from Russian shelling in the eastern Ukrainian town of Marinka, May 19, 2023. Marinka fell to Russian control in December 2023. © Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York Times
Drone view of ruined buildings and smoke from Russian shelling in the eastern Ukrainian town of Marinka, May 19, 2023. Marinka fell to Russian control in December 2023. © Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York Times

Ukraine: Love+War is published by FotoEvidence and is bilingual in both English and Ukrainian. The production of the book Ukraine: Love+War is supported by the Open Society Foundations Western Balkans  and the Grodzins Fund. The book can be ordered on the FotoEvidence website for 70€.

Cover of Ukraine: Love+War
Cover of Ukraine: Love+War

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