AP photos from Ukraine in 2024 convey wartime horror and hope
A man falls to his death from the window of a burning apartment after a Russian air strike. Two girls in pink tutus join a ballet class in a bomb shelter.
The grisly evidence of war is everywhere in Ukraine, where, for a third year, soldiers and civilians are enduring the Russian army’s onslaught.
AP photographers have traveled across the country, capturing the agony and the life-affirming joy witnessed in the conflict.
Bombs and missiles have turned residential neighborhoods into fiery infernos, while relentless attacks have destroyed homes, hospitals and schools.
Evacuations in front-line areas tear apart Ukrainian communities. The elderly are wrenched away from their longtime homes and neighbors.
AP photos have evoked the grief and the poignancy of funerals for fallen soldiers and for families killed by the Russian shelling. Open coffins, including those of children, provide a glimpse of the tragedy.
The United Nations accuses Russia of numerous human rights violations in Ukraine. They include aiming at civilian targets, devastating attacks on Ukraine’s power grid, and the forced transfer and deportation of children.
By the end of October, the UN estimated that the war had killed more than 12,000 Ukrainian civilians and injured almost 27,000.
Despite the suffering and hardship, civilians carry on with some everyday activities that wouldn’t be out of place in peacetime.
In northeastern Ukraine, about 20 young girls assemble for ballet lessons at the Princess Ballet Studio, where the windowless room doubles as a bomb shelter amid almost hourly air raids.
Children leap into the water at Kyiv’s Liko Diving School. Another boy looks thoughtful as he learns chess strategy from an elderly man in one of the Ukrainian capital’s public parks.
Clowns perform at a children’s hospital. Young people wave their arms and dance at a festival concert featuring an active serviceman in Ukraine’s Hroza battalion.
Yet, amid the bleakness and destruction, life goes on. At maternity hospital №7 in Odesa, Yulia Ponomarenko kisses her newborn baby Marianna.
Lead photo: Firefighters extinguish a fire after a Russian attack on a residential neighborhood in Kharkiv, Ukraine Saturday, Feb. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Yevhen Titov)
