The destroyed Irpin bridge, the dead in Boutcha, the bombs in Kharkiv... Since the outbreak of the conflict on February 24, 2002, the war in Ukraine has been documented by journalists and photographers.
Many clichés permeate our memories.
Here is a selection.
To discover
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Some photos may shock sensitive people.
February 24, 2022: Invasion is triggered
Trucks with Russian military equipment pass through a border checkpoint in Crimea February 24, 2002 as CCTV footage from border guards reveals.
Ukrainian Border Guard Committee / AFP
It's a slightly distorted CCTV image.
Published on February 24 by Ukraine, it shows Russian trucks of military equipment crossing the border post between Russia and annexed Crimea.
In the early morning, Vladimir Putin announced in a televised address a “special military operation” in Ukraine.
Read alsoFrom the Russian invasion to the Battle of Bakhmout: a year of war in Ukraine told in cards
Olena, the face of war
The photo of Olena Kourilo, a 52-year-old teacher, injured in a bombardment on the first day of the conflict, has gone around the world.
Aris Messinis / AFP
The face of Olena Kourilo, a teacher photographed leaving a hospital in Chuguiv - about fifty kilometers from the Russian border - by an AFP photographer reveals the reality of an armed conflict.
"
Never, under any conditions, will I submit to Putin, I prefer to die
," she said that day.
The image goes around the world.
The children on the way to the exodus
Refugee children leave by train Lviv, in western Ukraine, towards the city of Uzhhorod, near the border with Slovakia, March 3, 2022. Daniel LEAL / AFP
From the first days, women and children take the path of exodus.
Stations are stormed.
Several million refugees are leaving the country while others are internally displaced.
Many Ukrainians go into exile in Poland but others go further, in France and elsewhere.
More than half of children in Ukraine have had to leave their homes to flee insecurity and fighting, Unicef said on March 24, a month after the start of the conflict.
And "
this war is a tragedy of the child
", alert at the time with Le
Figaro
,
Philippe Cori, the deputy director of Unicef for Europe.
The Irpin bridge, the way to exile
Refugees under the rubble of the Irpin bridge, Ukrainian civilians prepare to flee the city on March 5, 2022. Emilio Morenatti/Associated Press
Shortly after the start of the invasion, the Ukrainian army blew up the Irpin bridge which linked the city to kyiv, the capital.
Thousands of refugees have to walk through this crossing point in terrible conditions.
Nearly 7.5 million Ukrainians fled the conflict in the first two months of the war.
The bombing of the Mariupol maternity hospital
A young pregnant woman was evacuated on March 9, 2022 from the bombed Mariupol maternity hospital.
She and her child will not survive.
Evgeniy Maloletka/Associated Press
Besieged for three months, the port city of Mariupol is the martyr city of Ukraine.
A week before the bombardment of the theater where a hundred civilians had taken refuge, a maternity hospital was hit by gunfire on March 9.
Two journalists from the American agency Associated Press (AP) are on the spot and document the explosion.
The photo of the evacuation of a young pregnant woman who will not survive makes everyone and provokes indignation.
For its part, Russian propaganda seizes on it and denounces a staging by having Marianna, another injured pregnant woman, testify.
The heroic siege of Azovstal
Ukrainian soldiers taking refuge in Mariupol's Azovstal ironworks, pictured here in a May 10 photo released by the Azov regiment, won the admiration of their compatriots.
Dmytro 'Orest' Kozatskyi / Azov Special Forces Regiment of the Ukrainian National Guard Press Office / AFP
While Moscow claims the capture of Mariupol on April 21, the fighting continues with the few thousand Ukrainian fighters entrenched in the gigantic Azovstal steelworks.
They are members of the Azov regiment whom the Russians call Nazi extremists.
A month later, deprived of food and ammunition, they laid down their arms.
Symbols of Ukrainian resistance, they are true heroes for their compatriots.
The city of Mariupol has been annexed by Russia since September 2022.
Boucha, symbol of horror
A body with tied hands in a street in Boutcha on April 2.
RONALDO SCHEMIDT / AFP
The Ukrainian army retook Boutcha, a suburb of kyiv, on April 1 after the Russian retreat.
As they enter, she discovers scenes of horror.
Summary executions, including those of civilians with their hands tied behind their backs.
The Ukrainian president describes these assassinations as “
war crimes
”.
They provoke significant economic sanctions against Russian coal and oil.
Read alsoIn Ukraine, the atrocious litany of war crimes committed by Russian forces
sabotaged gas pipelines
A picture taken on September 28, 2022 from a Swedish Coastguard aircraft shows the release of gas from a leak on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in Sweden's economic zone in the Baltic Sea.
Handout / SWEDISH COAST GUARD / AFP
Several unsolved sabotages are committed on the Nord Stream I and II gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea in September.
Russia is immediately singled out.
Putin, he denounces an act of “international terrorism” benefiting the United States, Ukraine and Poland
.
But after months of investigation, many Western officials are "
saying privately
" that Russia may not be behind the blasts.
This is what the Washington Post revealed in December.
The case does not end there: in February 2023, an American journalist accuses Washington of being behind the sabotage.
Read alsoWar in Ukraine: with the last human shadows in the pounded ruins of Bakhmout
Crimea's umbilical cord is struck
Smoke rises from the Kerch bridge, Crimea's true umbilical cord, on October 8.
AFP
Vladimir Putin receives a poisoned birthday present.
On the night of October 7 to 8, an explosion seriously damaged the Kerch bridge, which connects Crimea occupied since 2014 to Russia, and which the Russian president had inaugurated in 2018. Vladimir Putin orders its rapid reconstruction and is there makes his first visit to the annexed peninsula on December 5 since the start of
the "special military operation
".
Kharkiv under bomb attack
Ukrainian police forces, on December 3, 2022, in Kharkiv, in front of fragments of the Russian rockets that fell on the city.
Libkos/AP
In December 2022, a couple of Ukrainian photographers posted on Instagram the striking snapshot of the sum of all the Russian missiles that had fallen on Kharkiv since the start of the war.
Ukraine's second-largest city, which managed to repel the offensive in at least May, is one of the hardest-hit bombing targets.
"
Looking at this photo, you can imagine the number of ruined lives, destroyed houses, devastated schools, kindergartens... Kharkiv was a peaceful city
", testifies to
Figaro
Vlada Liberov.
Read alsoEast of Kharkiv, a hell of killings and rapes committed by the Russians in their rout
