At Lviv’s railroad station, women came to bid farewell to young soldiers as they headed off on trains to fight in the East of Ukraine.
Sofia, 13, of Luhansk, poses for a portrait at the Women’s shelter. She and her mother had fled shelling but also bitter cold and food shortages after electricity and supply lines were cut off to their home. Her mother doesn’t want to leave Ukraine and hopes to stay in the west for now while it is relatively safe with her family.
The road entering Bakhmut is covered in smoke as rockets strike the area. The city has been the focal point of the war and the site of a horrific battle for months destroying much of the city. This road, the last supply and evacuation route for Ukrainians, has come under heavy attack recently as Russians seek to control it.
Women cut strips for camp nets at a Library in Lviv. Women make up a powerful contingent of the volunteers, weaving camouflage nets, sewing flak jackets, cooking and housing refugees, and finding every other possible way to help their people and country.
Maria Kulieva is a fashion designer based in Kharkiv. When bombs started to fall on her city, her best friend and roommate, Deena Shaheen had to flea to evacuate her family and many of their friends also left the city, but Maria stayed and began to volunteer trying to support the armed forces in any way she knew how. She began to make plate carriers for the military and created special side plate pockets using her design and sewing skills in the ones she made for added protection. One day while dropping off supplies, she met and fell in love with a soldier. A couple of months later, she had a terrible feeling, she hadn’t heard from him in a day or two and felt in her gut that something was wrong. When she finally did hear from him, she was right, he had been injured in a blast, but the side plates she had put in his vest had saved his life. She is now living in Kharkiv, where the Russians were driven away a couple of months ago, but they are still only 40km from the Russian border. She is working on her spring collection while continuing to volunteer and make gear for the Armed Forces. He man, who she cant name because of his military service, visits when she can, and she and her best friend Deena who has returned, take care of his cat; Bes, which means devil.
Bucha, Ukraine. After a month of occupation by Russian invaders, during which time civilians were subjected to murder, torture and rape by the occupiers as well as terrorizing shelling and constant fighting, loss of electricity, water and access to food, on April 1, the Mayor of Irpin Oleksandr Markushyn, entered central Bucha with the military. Civilians came out of hiding for the first time in a month, to thank the soldiers and volunteers who were the first non-Russians they had seen in weeks.
Bucha, Ukraine. Gala and her daughter Veronika hid at home throughout the occupation. Gala (blue hair) said that the soldiers would come into her home twice a day threatening to kill them and terrorizing the neighborhood.
A funeral was held at the Church of the Most Holy Apostles Peter and Paul in Lviv, Ukraine on March 11, 2022, for 3 Ukrainian soldiers Taras Didukh, Dmytro Kabakov and Andrea Stefanyshyn who were killed in the Russian invasion. (Natalie Keyssar for TIME)
Ivan Fedko , 19 and Ruslana Fylymonova, 19, were in high school together and had crushes on each other, but it wasn’t until the war broke out that they got together. They fell in love and then Ivan joined the armed forces and went to fight at the front line in the same unit as Ruslana’s parents, and Ruslana endured torturous months worrying for her boyfriend and entire family. They kept in touch with letters and telegram messages and calls when they could and are now happily reunited in Kyiv while Ivan is on a break rotation awaiting future assignments.
Smoke over a factory which was hit by a Russian missile early that morning in Odesa.
Bert Wilhaus of Holland waited for a train to enter Ukraine to go help fight the Russians. A soldier himself, though not Ukrainian, he said he was crying inside when he saw the news and wanted to put his fighting skills to use to help the country. He didn’t know where he would end up but he would take the train to Lviv and offer his help.
On Wednesday morning, the Lviv train station was packed with lines stretching in wide circles around the nearby plaza with people trying to get out of Ukraine. In a womens’ room upstairs in the station designated as a shelter for women and children, many took a moment to sleep and rest after harrowing escapes. At the rail station in Lviv, the line to get on outgoing trains was in the hundreds of people huddled in the cold. One woman, a maternity ward doctor, waited on a nearly empty platform for the train to return to Odessa to get back to work, just as shells began to hit her city.
Andrii Freel Shalimov, and his wife, Oleksandra Darmohrai, became parents to twins 3 months ago, soon after Russian forces withdrew from the area surrounding their home city of Kyiv. Andrii is a well known rapper and activist who was very active in the Euro Maidan uprisings, and he is now using his notoriety to raise money and gather supplies for civilians and the armed forces. Oleksandra (Sasha) is carefully trying to give her son and daughter a healthy safe upbringing. They live on the 20th floor of an apartment building which is now frequently without power due to Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure, which makes bringing the babies 20 floors down to a shelter during air raid alerts, let alone going up and down the stairs with a stroller, extremely difficult. Sasha worries about the children’s development in the dark so she rigged Christmas lights to their mobile. Andrii (who goes by rap name Freel) started prepping for power outages and food shortages before they came, calculating the lengths Russia would go to to hurt the people if they could not take Kyiv. He’s built home made heating devices from flower pots and camping stoves.
Left, female military Chaplain poses with her pistol in her lap for a photo in Odessa while on a break for serving in July. Right: A factory which was hit by a Russian missile early that morning in Odesa.
A man who lives near the street of destroyed tanks shows his home where he and his elderly father rode out the month in their home despite constant shelling.
Soldiers pose for a photo in Bucha.
The mother of Taras Didukh, Maria, weeps over his casket. A funeral was held at the Church of the Most Holy Apostles Peter and Paul in Lviv, Ukraine on March 11, 2022, for 3 Ukrainian soldiers Taras Didukh, Dmytro Kabakov and Andrea Stefanyshyn who were killed in the Russian invasion.