DAVID PRATT IN UKRAINE: Devastating snapshots of a conflict with no end in sight

In that time, I travelled to some of the towns and cities most devastated by the fighting and witnessed how ordinary people are coping six months on in a conflict with no end in sight. 

In Borodyanka I saw a ruined landscape where apartment blocks and those civilians inside were indiscriminately shelled and rocketed. In Bucha I saw the final resting place of those victims of atrocities that will be remembered in the same way as the massacres that took the lives of innocent Bosnians in Srebrenica and Vietnamese at My Lai.

Pictured above, on a chilly morning in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, the wife and daughter of 32-year-old Volodymyr Rurak kneel in the street as his coffin approaches the Saints Peter and Paul Garrison Church carried by pallbearers. He was killed in action in the the eastern Ukrainian town of Lyman.

In Kyiv I watched recently as the city’s citizens showed their defiance during Ukraine’s Independence Day by lining the city’s elegant Khreshchatyk Street with destroyed Russian tanks and armoured vehicles.

And finally, over the past week or so I’ve been in the south of the country and the city of Mykolaiv which has faced relentless bombardment over the past six months taking a heavy toll on the civilian population. 

It’s from Mykolaiv too that much of the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive to try and retake the Russian occupied neighbouring city of Kherson is being launched.This photo essay offers a few glimpses from the most recent visit along with some images taken earlier this year at the start of the war. 

As a portfolio of the war, they focus mainly on the conflict’s toll on ordinary people who could never have imagine this time last year that their lives and country would be turned upside down.

As a bitter winter looms, Ukrainians know that things will get worse before they get better. But their determination to rid their country of its Russian invaders and restore peace and freedom to their nation is inspiring to witness. These photographs I hope go a little way to showing the struggle they face and the courage with which they face it.The mother of a soldier killed in action weeps over his grave during his funeral in Lviv. It’s estimated that 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since the war began in February 

In more peaceful times, more than 1 million people a day rode the trains of the Kyiv Metro. The three-line network boasts underground stations decorated with marble friezes, mosaics, chandeliers and vaulted ceilings. Since the Russian invasion those stations have also served as emergency shelters for an estimated 15,000 Kyiv residents. Here Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is seen giving a television address on one of the stations many screens

At least eight of the 29 multistorey buildings in Borodyanka are to be demolished after being damaged to varying degrees by the Russian onslaught on the industrial town. The nightmarish carcasses of the apartment blocks hit by Russian bombs, rockets, and shells remaining standing for now, blackened ghosts that have become familiar figures in the landscape and enduring reminders of the devastation wreaked on buildings and lives in the city a few months ago

Destroyed Russian armour is a common sight in those areas that saw fierce fighting. According to the Ukrainian military Russia has lost more than 2,000 tanks and almost 49,000 military personnel since President Vladimir Putin ordered his forces into Ukraine.

It’s the scene of one of the war’s worst atrocities to date when Russian troops retreated at the end of March from around Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. In their wake they left behind a trail of more than 1,200 bodies in the city of Bucha. No longer able to defer burial, Ukrainian investigators are photographing unclaimed and unidentified bodies, taking DNA samples and assigning them numbers, hoping that one day their families will claim them. Here a local woman prays in Bucha cemetery where most are buried

The village of Moschun saw a fierce battle between Ukrainian and Russian forces but the Ukrainian success in pushing the Russians back is said to have helped prevent the invaders gaining access to the capital Kyiv. Here at a checkpoint, Ukrainian soldiers have created an effigy of a Russian soldier

During Ukraine’s recent Independence Day celebrations an alternative ‘parade’ was created by the authorities in Kyiv who put on display destroyed Russian military vehicles. When the burned and blasted remains of Russian tanks and artillery were first lifted from cranes and lined up along Kyiv’s elegant Khreshchatyk Street many people were moved and unsure what to make of the defiance, but they came in their thousand to witness it

Since fighting along the southern front severed a pipeline in April, cutting tap water to many areas, residents of Mykolaiv have spent weeks walking around the city to find water trucks, some getting around by bike and others driving. Military officials say it could be at least another month or more before the city gets back regular access to tap water
 

Early in the war the strategically important southern city of Mykolaiv almost fell to the Russians. Only the dogged defence by Ukrainian forces pushed the invaders back from the city’s outskirts. Today it had become the jumping off point for the latest counteroffensive by Ukrainian forces as they attempt to retake the neighbouring city of Kherson from Russian control