Risking their lives, teams of medics help wounded civilians and military personnel on the front line. Minutes separated them from the end of the day. 45-year-old Olena and her husband, 44-year-old Artur, were standing in the yard in front of their house. They never went to bed early. She stood close to the garage and he was a little farther away. It is possible that she went …

  The inhabitants of the most damaged housing estate in the city are trying to breathe new life into it. There is still a terrible silence in Northern Saltivka. It is occasionally interrupted by the cooing of pigeons, the rustling of branches, the creaking of doors, or by a passing car crushing glass and rubble; more often the rumble of artillery, less often footsteps or conversation. Among the …

  Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, is under constant threat from the Russian army. This is a story about how its inhabitants are learning to live under these conditions. For Hamlet Zinkovsky, urban space is like a grand studio. You come across his paintings almost everywhere you go. He placed them in inconspicuous places in the past, but now they are found right on the streets. “I want …

  The Russian army is trying to cut off Donbas from the rest of Ukraine. Somewhere east of Kharkiv, on a now pivotal stretch of the front, Ukrainian troops are fighting to frustrate this plan. There are no extensive, deep and winding trenches here, which are associated with war fronts. You can only see pits carved into the ground, covered with branches and hay, scattered over the territory …

  Lyman has become another city that the war has reached. Some residents are deciding to leave at the last minute. There are thirteen people standing by the corrugated steel supermarket hall. All of them have decided on the first day of May to leave Lyman, population 22,000, in Donetsk Oblast. On the road near the store lay branches cut by shrapnel. Two shots are heard, one whistle …

  Ukrainian soldiers defend the last scrap of the Luhansk Oblast. Soon, it too may fall into the hands of the Russians. Thick black smoke rises above the area. A Ukrainian refinery, bombed by the Russians, has been burning for several days in the vicinity of Lysychansk. The refinery is surrounded by picturesque canola fields – canola, like sunflower, is one of the key crops for local agriculture. …

  The Ukrainian army is taking back towns near Kharkiv. It may soon regain control over other sections of the border. A burnt out Akatsiya self-propelled gun stands in the middle of the road near a destroyed house, right next to a shell crater. The torn hull, the remains of the turret with a long heavy barrel, broken caterpillar tread and a pile of casings litter the ground. …

  After calls by the President of Ukraine, volunteers from abroad have joined the fight against Russia. Among them are Poles. Not only Ukrainian soldiers are stationed in the dense forest, where the singing of birds mixes with the roar of artillery. One team is preparing positions. They dig deep. This is due to a Colombian who prepared for battle in the jungle. “His first time, he dug …

  At least 10 million Ukrainians had to leave their places of residence. They dream of seeing them again. Two days before the Russian attack, Maria and Dmytro nervously paced the apartment, smoking cigarettes one after another and changing their minds every half hour: whether to leave Kharkiv or stay? They bought tickets for a train to Lviv just in case. They chaotically slipped things into suitcases and …