The first four weeks have passed since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began. To most Ukrainians, they seem like many years, but more than 60% of Ukraine’s population is ready to join in rebuilding the country – financially or physically.
“We are defending our lives, our freedom, our own state. Our children. So – our future. This is a war for independence. And we have to win. “, — said Volodymyr Zelensky in an address to Ukrainians on the evening of March 23.
1. Defenders of Kiev, the second day of the invasion of Russian troops in Ukraine
The Ukrainian capital is still called one of the enemy’s main targets, but during the first months of the Great War, the occupiers failed to capture or even surround Kyiv. Like most other cities in Ukraine, during this time the capital has become accustomed to living in the mode of constant sirens, long curfews, the threat of sudden shelling and the roar of artillery shelling on the outskirts of Kiev. At the end of the first month of the war, the Armed Forces were able to push the enemy away from the city, although saboteurs are still being detained in the capital.
2. Civilian Ukrainians train to throw Molotov cocktails at exercises in Zhytomyr
Extraordinary unity helped Ukrainians survive the first month of the war. In addition to the Armed Forces, Ukraine is defended in various ways by volunteers and volunteers, civilians and territorial defense forces. Back in early March, the Defense Ministry said that more than 100,000 Ukrainians had joined the defense since the invasion began.
3. Russian equipment followed the ship: a column of occupiers destroyed in the first week of the invasion in Bucha (Kyiv region)
During the first month of the full-scale war on Ukrainian soil, 530 tanks, almost 1,600 armored combat vehicles, more than 1,000 units of Russian vehicles, 108 aircraft and 124 helicopters were destroyed.
4. Residents of Irpen are trying to escape from the city through the destroyed bridge
Irpin is one of the towns in the Kyiv region, which became the location of the hottest battles in an attempt to stop the enemy’s attack on Kyiv. To do this, in the first days after the Russian invasion, several bridges were blown up near Kyiv. Therefore, in order to get out of Irpen, the locals had to overcome the destroyed part of the crossing over the river Irpen – with the support of the Armed Forces and under constant fire from the enemy, who deliberately aimed at civilians. Dozens of unarmed people, including children, died in the first month of the war in Irpin, Vorzel, Bucha, Gostomel, Borodyanka and other towns near Kyiv.
5. A high-rise building in Borodyanka (Kyiv region), completely destroyed after the Russian shelling
The author of this photo, well-known Ukrainian photographer Maksym Levin, disappeared in the Kyiv region more than a week ago. His fate is currently unknown.
6. President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky after an interview with foreign correspondents
Immediately after the beginning of the invasion, Zelensky was offered to evacuate many Western countries from Ukraine, from the United States to Great Britain. However, the President of Ukraine and his team still remain in Kyiv, recording new appeals to Ukrainians from Bankova every day and delivering new speeches to Western governments and parliaments.
7. Rescuers are fighting a fire in a high-rise building in the Sviatoshynskyi district of Kyiv, where a Russian missile hit
Rescuers from the State Emergency Service have become the same “gods" for Ukrainians in recent weeks as Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers. It is known that at least 19 rescuers from the State Emergency Service have died in different regions of Ukraine since the beginning of the invasion.
8. The body of the Russian occupier, killed between the cities of Bucha and Irpin (Kyiv region)
The Armed Forces inflict enormous losses on the occupiers. During the four weeks of the war in Ukraine, the Russian army lost 15.8 thousand soldiers and officers killed. This is more than the deaths of Soviet soldiers in the 10 years of Soviet war in Afghanistan; or than Russia lost in the two Chechen wars combined.
9. Residential building destroyed by Russian troops in Chernihiv
At the end of the first month of the war, Chernihiv, which became one of the main obstacles on the way of the occupiers to Kyiv, found itself in a humanitarian crisis. The city, which is subjected to massive strikes and air raids every day, has no light, water, heating, and almost no gas.
10. Consequences of the shelling of a high-rise building in the Sviatoshynskyi district of Kyiv
In the capital alone, 87 houses were damaged or destroyed during the first month of the war, while in Ukraine in total they can already be counted in the thousands.
11. A resident of Volnovakha (Donetsk region) reacts to the destruction of the city by the Russian occupiers
“Volnovakha with its infrastructure as such no longer exists", — said on March 12 the head of the Donetsk regional military-civil administration Pavlo Kyrylenko.
Before the war, 100,000 people lived in the Volnovakha district. Since the end of February, fierce battles have been fought for the strategically important city in the Donetsk direction, and Volnovakha’s infrastructure has been virtually destroyed.
12. Children in the evacuation train say goodbye to their father, who stays at the Kyiv railway station
According to UN estimates, 3.5 million people left Ukraine in the first month of the war, mostly women and children, as men between the ages of 18 and 60 are banned from leaving the country. Another 6 million to 12 million Ukrainians, according to various UN and OP estimates, are considered internally displaced persons. This is the biggest migration crisis in Europe since the Second World War.
13. A Kyiv family with two children found shelter in the subway
From the first day of the war, the subways of Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Dnipro have become reliable bomb shelters for tens of thousands of Ukrainians. In particular, at least 15,000 city residents have become accustomed to living in the Kyiv metro.
On the photo, Oleksandr Ivoshenko, whose family moved underground in late February, raises his daughter Kira, and his wife holds their son Danylo.
14. Strike of Russian troops in a high-rise building in Mariupol
According to local authorities, at least 2.3 thousand people died in Mariupol, but the real figure may be many times higher.
This frame was taken by the Ukrainian photographer of the Associated Press Yevhen Maloletka, who together with his colleague Mstislav Chernov stayed in the besieged city for the longest time.
Their videos and photos documented the greatest tragedy of the first month of the war: day after day, the occupiers systematically destroyed Mariupol, depriving it of light, water, gas, heating, hospitals and rescue services without letting Ukrainian aid columns through. The city with a population of over 400,000 people was forced to survive in basements. While Russian troops beat Mariupol with maximum force: they launched air strikes, fired missiles, fired from tanks at apartment buildings, and bombed the largest shelters (including the drama theater and school).
15. A pregnant woman seriously injured as a result of the occupiers’ attack on a maternity hospital and a hospital in Mariupol
As the author of the photo Yevhen Maloletka later said, the woman later died at the hospital from her injuries. Her unborn child did not survive either.
In all, 128 children were killed and more than 170 were injured in four weeks of full-scale war in Ukraine.
16. Farewell to the Hero of Ukraine Valery Chibineev, who died on March 3 near Gostomel (Kyiv region)
Legendary paratrooper from Berdyansk, Captain Valery Chibineev fought in the Donbass as part of the 79th Separate airborne assault battalion Highly Mobile Landing Forces of the Armed Forces. He was the commander of a sniper company. He liberated Chervonyi Lyman in the Donetsk region, took part in battles in the Biryukovo district in the Luhansk region, near Izvariny, and defended the Donetsk airport.
In 2016, during a parade on Khreshchatyk on Ukraine’s Independence Day, then-President Petro Poroshenko presented Chibineev with the Hero of Ukraine awards.
On March 3, on his 34th birthday, Chibineev was killed in battle near Gostomel, performing a special task as an employee of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.
17. Odesa saves from possible blows one of the symbols of the city – the monument to Duke de Richelieu
More than a thousand sandbags have been laid out. The occupiers have not yet captured Odessa, although they have shelled the coast and the region. During the month of the war, the Russian army has not yet managed to land in Odessa.
18. “New Ukrainian Madonna": a wounded woman from Kyiv who managed to protect her own baby with her body
27-year-old Olga received serious shrapnel wounds after another blow inflicted by the occupiers on Kyiv. In the photo, she is holding her unharmed one-and-a-half-month-old daughter, Victoria, at the Okhmatdyt Clinic, whom she defended during the attack. Nearby – Dmitry, Olga’s husband and Victoria’s father, who was also wounded in the legs. The shot was widely distributed on social networks and the world media.
19. Consequences of the occupiers’ attack on the center of Kharkiv
The Russians failed to take Kharkiv, but Ukraine’s second-largest city became one of the main targets for Russian shelling and strikes in the first month of the war.
20. Children at the playground in Mariupol near one of the destroyed high-rise buildings
In the fourth week of the invasion, it became known that the occupiers were forcibly deporting part of the residents of Mariupol (including the Left Bank district of the city) to Russia.
Russian troops resorted to the same practice in the occupied settlements of Kharkiv and Kherson regions.
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