A school bus in the Kupiansk district of Kharkiv province transports troops from the front line in February 2023. (Photographs by Jędrzej Nowicki)
How two years of war transformed a society
The Kremlin planned to take Kyiv in three days, the rest of Ukraine in six weeks. As Russian troops poured across the border on February 24, 2022, one Russian columnist declared early victory. “Ukraine,” he wrote, “will no longer exist.” Instead, Kyiv was not taken, the column was retracted, and, two years later, Ukraine still exists. The 24 months of fighting have nevertheless exacted an extraordinary toll on Ukrainians, creating a physical and psychological shock that will last for generations. Ordinary landscapes have become extraordinary. Cities have been pockmarked by war damage, villages reduced to rubble, wide areas of the countryside depopulated. Ordinary life has changed too. Ukrainians have reorganized their lives, fled their homes, learned to live with deep insecurity, and been forced to make extraordinary choices. Words that people took for granted in the past, or never thought much about—bravery, cowardice, patriotism—have acquired new significance. Look at these photographs with an eye to that history: They are an attempt to capture in images a transformation that sometimes defies description.
Left: A factory burns on the outskirts of Kyiv in March 2022. Right: A train bound for the Polish border stands on a railway platform in Lviv, Ukraine, on the first day of the war, in February 2022.
Goodbyes in front of Kyiv-Pasazhyrskyi train station on the second day of the war, in February 2022
After an explosion damaged the bridge from Irpin to Kyiv, refugees crossed what remained of the structure, in March 2022.
Left: Residents of Biskvitne wait for food from volunteers. In late March 2022, Ukrainian forces reclaimed the village from the Russian army after a month of occupation. Right: A man takes shelter in Heroiv Pratsi metro station in Kharkiv’s Saltivka district in March 2022.
A farm burns on the outskirts of Balakliia in October 2022.
Left: Patients lie in an intensive-care unit after being wounded by Russian shelling. Right: Sunflower fields in Dnipro province.
An Orthodox priest says a prayer at mass-burial site on the outskirts of Izium, in the Kharkiv region. More than 400 graves were discovered at the spot after Ukraine reclaimed the area from Russian occupiers.
The devastated village of Stepova Dolyna, outside Kherson, in May 2023
Left: Flooding caused by the destruction of a Dnipro River dam, June 2023. Right: An evacuation after the collapse of the dam.
Left: A shelled building in Kyiv’s Obolon district. Right: A boy in Kharkiv.
A severely damaged house in the village of Cherkaska Lozova
A man walks past a destroyed entrance to the Heroiv Pratsi metro station in Kharkiv’s Saltivka district.
