In the ruins of war

I started photography in 2019 when I was 40 years old. I met Yuri Velichko, a photographer and incredibly interesting person who inspired me.

In the beginning, photography was just an interesting hobby for me, but over time this passion turned into a professional activity. I gave up my day job and took up commercial photography because I realised that it filled my whole life.

When the war broke out, Yuri and I decided to photograph the events in order to document history. We travelled to Svyatohirsk Lavra and crossed the river on a pontoon, as the bridge on the way to the monastery had been blown up. We had to spend the night there. It was a war zone near Kramatorsk.

Together with Yuri, we worked on the film ‘For Our Freedom’, filmed, edited and did everything we could to tell the story of Ukrainians fighting for their freedom.

We filmed stories about people in Dnipro, about their thoughts and feelings. Later we started working for the ATO Museum (ATO – Anti-Terrorist Operation, official name in Ukraine for the war in Donbas from 14 April 2014-2018).

We travelled to the east, documented historical moments, interviewed military personnel and visited Kherson after the liberation.

It was particularly memorable to film the funeral of the first dead soldiers in Dnipro. These moments were very difficult and I often felt them deeply. But over time I became a little less sensitive.

We also travelled to villages where I saw the consequences of the war. I particularly remember the village of Oleksandrivka, where I took photos from the car without knowing exactly what I was photographing because the area was mined. When I looked at these photos later, I was shocked by what I saw: tanks, destroyed cars, ruined houses. For me, these pictures became witnesses to the brutality that the war brought with it.

A woman we met told me how she used to collect mines from the flower petals in the pastures because they often tore off the cows’ legs and to make the area safer for people. She carefully collected the mines with a long stick and a cut-open plastic bottle. This woman started to give workshops where she taught others how to defuse dangerous areas. I was very impressed by her courage.

How do I see my future? I’ll think about that tomorrow.

18.11.2024

My 55 photos documenting Russian war crimes against Ukraine were handed over to the Central State Archive-Museum of Literature and Art of Ukraine.

After the full-scale invasion, most of the photos I submitted to international photo competitions are dedicated to the theme of war. And I am glad that these photos were recognized in these competitions, because people in the world need to see what is happening in Ukraine.

I am a member of the National Union of Photographers of Ukraine. My press card, which I got as a photographer, has often saved me in difficult situations. It was my pass for areas where photography could be dangerous. Photographing such events was a new experience for me, and I was never prepared for the emotions that arose during the work. When I pressed the shutter button, I didn’t know what would be in the shot. My hands were shaking, and to be honest, it was very difficult to deal with this inner pressure. The hardest part was when the police came up to me and asked, “What are you filming here?” I showed my ID, but I was often told: “You can’t do that here. You must have other documents.”

During one of my reports, I was filming near School 51 and was discovered by the military. They drove up and demanded documents. In such cases, I explain that I’m a photographer, but that doesn’t always help. There were cases where they forced me to delete my photos.

I remember photographing a sports competition that took place in a hotel after the shelling. Our athletes ran through the city and we photographed them at the finish line. Everything was coordinated with the city authorities, but even then we were confronted with questions from the military. They demanded explanations about what we were doing here and why we were filming. Again, we had to show all the documents.

Once I took a photo from the window of my car of a banner on the road saying “Russian soldier, go home, you are not welcome here”. A military patrol noticed this and when I arrived at work, the military stormed in with machine guns. They forced me to delete all my photos. Luckily, my camera had two memory cards: I took RAW photos on one and JPEG photos on the other. Thanks to this duplication, the photos were preserved and the military didn’t notice the replacement card.

It’s psychologically difficult for me to photograph tragic situations, but I do it anyway. Even after a while, my hands shake with horror when I see them. But I carry on. I document the crimes against our people, against our country, so that they are not forgotten. Because human memory tends to smooth out sharp edges.

I am not a journalist, I am a human being. But it is important to me that our destruction, our pain and our loss are recorded. This is especially true when the destruction affects you personally. At our workplace, for example, 17 windows and 9 doors were destroyed by the blast. That was a nightmare.

It’s important to always consider people’s emotional state when taking photos, especially when it comes to private homes. When I take photos, I always approach them and ask for permission. People are scared and I try to be as careful and considerate as possible, because every shot is a part of their life that will never be the same again.

Nevertheless, I remain in Mykolaiv, my home town. For me, it is the capital of peace. Even if there is a war, I cannot and will not leave my home. Negotiations with the enemy are unavoidable, every war ends at the negotiating table. But it depends on the conditions under which this happens.

17.11.2024

How I remember the first day of the war

On February 24, 2022, a beast named Putin declared war on Ukraine and the entire civilized world, calling it Military Operation, Decentralization, Demilitarization. Of course, the horror was great, but at that moment I was sure that it would soon be over, that our European and American partners would intervene and protect us. We had a sick grandmother in our arms, we didn’t have a wheelchair.

What it was like

The first shelling in our neighborhood was around 5 p.m. on March 3. We were at home in our apartment on the second floor. First we heard the whistling of the shells near us, then the explosions started. My wife and I hid in the hallway, we didn’t run to the cellar. There were casualties: a grenade hit an apartment on the first floor and killed a father and a child, the mother was seriously injured and taken to hospital.

Our neighborhood was at the center of the hostilities, as it was in the immediate vicinity of the Azov-Steel Metallurgical Combine. My wife’s relatives lived ten minutes away from us – my mother and my brother and his family. Our mother was dying, so we visited her every day, cooked for her and looked after her. On March 15, I was lighting a fire in the courtyard when heavy shelling started. The first shell fell in the neighbors’ vegetable garden and I ran into the house to see where my wife was. When I didn’t find her in the house, I jumped onto the veranda and at that moment a shell hit a meter and a half away from me. The veranda shattered, I heard a hiss and instinctively fell to the ground. There was a terrible roar, then absolute silence and darkness. My first thought was: that’s it, that’s the moment. Then I realized that my legs and arms were moving and I started to pick up everything that had fallen on me – bricks, beams, slate. There was a yellow haze and an unpleasant smell. I went to the house where my wife’s brother lived – they were all there. I had a concussion and could barely hear anything. Luckily my grandmother was only slightly dusty.

Two days later, there was a knock on our front door. It was my niece with her two children, all covered in dust and blood. Their farm had been bombed again, the father was badly wounded, he had nowhere to go (we buried him later right in the vegetable garden). The children were also injured: My niece had a piece of flesh ripped out of her arm and the wound on her leg was literally pulsating with blood. The boy had a wound on his back and the girl’s head was split open. My wife and I were shocked, of course. We couldn’t find a paramedic, but our soldiers gave us painkillers and the neighbors brought hydrogen peroxide, bandages and gauze bandages. We put a pressure bandage around his leg and washed the wounds as best we could. The boy was in a lot of pain, waking up at night and crying, but he endured all the pain.

A few days later we hid in our hallway as usual when there was another shelling, but the noise seemed particularly strong, the whole house was shaking. We literally had Russian tanks in our yard firing Azov steel and we thought that was why the walls were shaking. But it turned out they had been firing directly at our house. A fire broke out and the residents panicked. And suddenly the Kadyrovtsy stormed the door. Three men stormed into our first floor apartment and rudely demanded that we leave immediately. They didn’t even give us time to pack. We managed to take a rucksack with our documents and a camera bag, which were at the entrance, a few items of clothing and two thermos flasks of water. We couldn’t go far, my niece could barely move on two sticks. So we simply moved into the basement of the neighboring house (where we spent the next two weeks).

About an hour later, we heard loud women screaming upstairs. The woman kept repeating the same phrase: “Why did they come out, why did they come out, why did they come out?” It turned out that a grenade had hit one of the apartments during the shelling and the woman’s son, Denis, had run outside from the entrance to see which floor was burning and to try to put out the fire. At that moment, he is killed by a sniper with a shot to the temple. His father rushes to him – and the next shot kills his father. They lay outside the house for a week. Then a large orange dump truck arrived, half-loaded with corpses, and the DNR people threw the bodies of the two boys into it. Denis’ mother (she was sitting in the basement with his wife and one-year-old daughter) was given the documents and personal belongings they had found with the bodies. Her son’s ring wouldn’t come off his finger, and one of the DNR people suggested cutting it off. Can you imagine what kind of attitude they have towards people? The woman didn’t agree, of course, but one of the residents brought oil, which was used to remove the ring.

After we moved into the basement, we had nothing to eat. The next morning, I decided to go back to our apartment and, if possible, get something to eat. But when I came out, I saw that all that was left of our house were black walls with empty windows. Everything in the apartment had been reduced to ashes, the glasses with the twist-off jars had melted together, the fire was so strong. There was a burnt body next to the front door. It was probably one of our neighbors who had run out of the driveway when the fire broke out and probably hadn’t gotten far. A bedridden, disabled grandfather lived on the seventh floor. We couldn’t take him with us when we ran away, and when we came back we saw that he had been burned as if in a crematorium.

In the basement next to the house I found half a packet of butter and a few nuts. I collected the nuts and brought them to the children: That was our first breakfast. We gave the children a spoonful of butter and a nut: butter – nut, butter – nut, that’s how they ate their breakfast. But I realized that we couldn’t live like that for long. I left the cellar and went in search of food. I came to Metallurgov Street. There was a burnt corpse lying there, and a rolled-up rope made of sheets, blankets, curtains and some rags was hanging from the sixth floor. Someone had climbed down, hopefully they had made it. Metallurgov Street had seen a sight like this before, “Armageddon”, as they say. There were stones, broken wires, fallen trees. Further on, at the junction of Metropolitskaya Street and Metallurgov Street, there was a broken tank. It appeared to be a Russian tank.

I went in search of food and when I passed the destroyed bakery where we had bought croissants and rolls before the war, I saw some sweets lying on the floor next to the entrance. I climbed in, picked up the chocolates, turned around and saw that a machine gun was pointed at me.

It was a Kadyrov troop, and among them was a Belarusian who wore a Belarusian flag on his badge. I explained to them that I had two wounded children in my cellar who needed something to eat. They started to examine me, undressed me. They looked for tattoos or traces of my body armor. They checked my papers and let me go. I walked back along a parallel street but ran into police officers again. One of them checked my hands for traces of gunshot residue and told me not to come back, otherwise they would have orders to shoot without warning.

I had another unpleasant encounter with DNR security. They walked through the courtyards and asked the residents whether Ukrainian military or activists lived in their houses. A neighbor apparently wanted to show off in front of them and reported me for filming everything. They summoned me. I said that I had filmed people cooking on the fire and that both my cameras in the apartment were burnt. Of course, I didn’t mention that I had another camera in the cellar where we lived, and of course my entire photo archive.

JEvery day the food ran out and I had to go to them, despite my political views, and tell them that I had nothing for my children to eat. There was a cook who, I realized, didn’t want to fight. When he heard about the children, he gave me condensed milk, stew and cookies. Many people in the DNR were forcibly mobilized.

A nurse who had once bandaged our children told us the same thing. When they saw that our little children were injured, they immediately offered, “We’ll take them to Donetsk to the hospital.” I said, “They have a mother, she decides, we’ll treat them ourselves.” The nurse also said to me: “I’m not from the military. I worked in a hospital in Donetsk, but we were thrown into the war here, as cannon fodder.” They were used as cannon fodder, followed by the Kadyrov troops, who were already taking on the role of cleaning up.

After a neighbor pointed out to the occupiers that I was photographing what was happening there, we decided to return to the private sector, to my grandmother’s house. I tried to make a halfway normal house out of three houses: I patched up as best I could and repaired the roof so that we could live in it. There, in that house, we lived under fire, every day and every night. They bombed Azov steel, they bombed with everything they could. There was no air defense in Mariupol, and that is probably the main reason why Mariupol could not be held.

We saw Russian planes circling over Azov Steel all day long, planes getting into position, rockets fired, bombs dropped on parachutes, everything exploding. That was every day, every night… During this whole time, my wife and I made bandages for the children and their mother every other day. I went to the bombed-out volunteer camps near us to get bandages, syringes and medicine. At the end of April, before Easter, my wife heard on the radio that there was a corridor that was supposed to leave Mariupol in the direction of Zaporizhia.

We had an old radio receiver that received Ukrainian radio on medium wave. That’s how we kept ourselves informed, because we didn’t know what was happening in Ukraine beforehand. Our daughter lives in Kyiv, but communication with her was also very difficult.

We looked for different ways to leave the city. Private drivers were offered for 400 dollars per person, including the obligatory filtration (Russian filtration camps for Ukrainians, also called concentration camps). There was a problem with filtration, although it was possible to avoid it by paying 100-200 dollars per hand. This could have been dangerous for me, as I was known in Mariupol as a pro-Ukrainian photographer. If you type “Evgeny Sosnovsky, Mariupol” into Google, you will find all the details about me.

After three unsuccessful attempts to get on an evacuation bus, we found a private transport company that took us out of Mariupol on April 30 without us ending up in a filtration camp.

There were many checks along the entire route from Mariupol to Tokmak, about twenty: my documents and luggage were checked at every checkpoint, but fortunately not my hard disks.

For the first time in two months we saw light, light bulbs, water from the tap. I couldn’t get enough of the bread: I walked around all evening carrying the bread because it was so fresh and delicious.

We had internet there and I transferred all the photos to my hard drive, encrypted in case they were found at the checkpoints.

Soon we made it to Zaporizhzhye, where the Ukrainian checkpoints began, where we received a very friendly welcome and were helped in every way possible. Our family then drove to Kyiv.

Where do I see my future?

Even in Kyiv, I try to work, take some photos, play theater with our colleagues. I hope that I can lead a normal, comfortable life, but I don’t know if that will be the case in Mariupol. I just can’t imagine when it will be liberated. I’m sure it will be liberated, but when it is liberated, there will be nothing left of the city. If they have almost destroyed Mariupol, they will destroy it completely when they leave. And anyway, it’s very hard to live when you know that this is a city of bones and blood. This is my hometown, our beloved Sea of Azov, where I often walked in the morning to breathe in the fresh sea air… Now it’s gone. I can’t imagine going back there, because now everything is black. You may have heard about the diary of an eight-year-old boy from Mariupol who wrote that the city of Mariupol is dead. Yes, it is dead and can only be resurrected in fairy tales. Everything can be rebuilt, but it will no longer be the same city of Mariupol. Maybe it will be better, more modern, but it will no longer be the city I lived in…

After we left, I wondered how Mariupol was living. In 2022, there was water and even light in some parts of the city, but still no gas. People were getting food, villagers were coming into the city to sell their produce.

Next to the houses were huge piles of garbage that no one had cleared away for months, human waste. It stank, it was unhygienic. There is almost nothing left of many houses, just rubble, and in the rubble lie the bodies of the residents. Imagine it all starting to rot now, seeping into the ground, getting into the water. The Russians keep saying that they will rebuild Mariupol, but we can’t believe that. We have the example of Donetsk in mind, which was not cleaned up by anyone after 2014-2015.

11.10.2022

Since the beginning of the Russian offensive in Ukraine, I have been documenting the traces of war as a photographer.

II am Ukrainian and 50 years old. For ten years I have been living in a war in which Russia has taken away my home in Luhansk, the graves of my ancestors in Donetsk and, in the last two and a half years, my physical safety in every city in Ukraine, wherever I am. Every day, Russian missiles and Shahid drones kill Ukrainian civilians.

Before the Russian invasion in 2014, I lived and worked in Luhansk.

I had a family and a job that I loved. I taught art photography at the State Academy of Culture and Art in Luhansk and headed the faculty. At that time, my creative life in photography was intense and productive.

I had my own exhibitions, took part in national and international photo salons, was a jury member at art competitions and gave my own workshops.

After the Russian troops took Luhansk and I was on the death list because of my pro-Ukrainian stance, I fled to Vinnytsia. I couldn’t take my photographic equipment with me, as the Russian occupiers could have interpreted this as unauthorized filming or espionage. That could have led to physical violence and arrest. That was dangerous, because two of my photography students were arrested when they tried to leave the occupied city.

In Vinnytsia, I had to give up my professional activity because the war situation required specialists in documentary and war photography. For more than five years, I taught the basics of documentary and photojournalism at the Faculty of Journalism at Vasyl Stus (Donetsk National University), which had been evacuated to Vinnytsia.

At the same time, I devoted myself to academic work, in particular to the study of visual content, its use in Russian propaganda and the fight against visual manipulation in the information and meaning wars of the post-Truth era.

Our research findings formed the basis for academic papers and presentations at academic conferences. Together with my colleague, we have developed a textbook for students on methods of recognizing visual manipulation and violations of international and national journalistic standards and how to counter Russian fakes in the media.

During my time at the university, I was a visiting researcher at the National Museum of Ukrainian History in World War II, which since 2014 has been presenting a new exhibition on the current Russian-Ukrainian war and the heroic resistance of the Ukrainian people against the armed aggression of the Russian Federation.

In 2022, the museum became the center of my professional activities related to recording the history of the brutal Russian military invasion of Ukraine, documenting numerous Russian crimes, collecting and processing materials, and jointly developing and implementing exhibition projects to cover the war in Ukraine.

11.2024