From Ground Zero In War-Torn Ukraine

I reached Ukraine on Februꦦary 25, 2022, along with Marco Cremonesi and Francesco Maviglia—two young reporters like me. We were all freelancers and it was our first time in a warzone. We had gone thereܫ to cover the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. A bus, full of soldiers, took us from the border of Poland to Ukraine. The roads were packed with cars and people were fleeing from Ukraine.

In the initial days of the war, everyone thought that Ukraine would be crushed by Russia in a week. But the territorial and civilian groups—which also had trained civilians in them—fought the Russians and managed to defend themselves. In the first months of 2022, it was difficult to take photographs because photojournalists w♌ere being mistaken for spies.

Kherson Oblast, which was occupied by the Russian army at the beginning of the invasion, was liberated after six months. The Ukrainian army pushed the Russian army beyond the Dnieper River, and divided f🦹amilies were reunited. Kherson Oblast continues to be under Russian fire every day, people try to carry on with their daily lives, but get killed while going to the supermarket; children play with ammunition there. The Russians are on the other side, while the Ukrainian snipers control the riverbank.

In January-February, 202💙3, war in the Donbass region was centred in Bakhmut, a city that for reasons of political origin is disputed. The urban fighting there was extremely violent, over 100,000 people died as the surrounded city resisted for months. A few civilians still live in the city in spite of being caught in the most violent part of the war. When I was with them documenting the work of recovering bodies, my Ukrainian translator contact got stuck in a booby-trapped mine. We tried to help him until he got to safety. If he had pulled the wire of the mine, all of us would have exploded.

Over time, warfare has chanജged with the use of drones of all kinds, move✱ment is more difficult.

Kramatorsk is o꧙ne of the last cities in Donbass still in Ukrainian territory. One night we returned home and a powerful bomb hit the city. We stepped out to check where the explosion had taken place and reached a residential area. A Russian ballistic missile had destroyed three buildings with people inside them. People were searching for survivors and helping the injured. The next day, the Russians launched two artillery shells in the same neighbourhood as the night before where they destroyed three residential buildings.

Text & Photographs by Carlo Cozzoli/Memora