When Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to recognise the pro-Russian, self-declared republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, a machine clicked into gear.
Suddenly, social media abounded with images and video footage from sources claiming to be objective news reporting outlets.
This content, likely created by unknown Russian troll farms, state actors or pro-Putin campaigners, depict Ukraine as the aggressor, with Ukrainian military invading sovereign Russian territory — a photo of a Ukrainian armoured vehicle on Russian territory, a video of Ukrainian troops crossing the Russian border, or Ukrainian personnel trying to blow up Russian tanks.
All were quickly debunked as false and invented. But the intent was clear: to muddy the waters, to stymie real reporting, and to create a narrative through which Putin can justify the attack. And more will surely come.
If the Vietnamese war was the first major conflict to play out to a watching public on television, the Ukrainian conflict promises to be mediated in a new televisual setting; unfolding moment by moment on our mobile devices in a way we may not be ready for.
Filtering the genuine from the invented, working out what is independent, verifiable and ethical and what it is compromised, partisan and illusionary—this will be key to understanding the war, and integral to working out how a Western alliance can hope to contribute to a peaceful resolution.
Here is a small list of some of the top verified photojournalists reporting at this moment on the ground and from the frontlines of the war, representing some of the world's most respected media organisations. Each is operating primarily on Twitter and Instagram, and their profiles are linked. This is not an exhaustive list, many other journalists, citizen-journalists and everyday Ukrainians will create great imagery as well.
Each genuine photojournalist in the country is putting their lives at risk to provide us with real insight into the true nature of this conflict. Please support them in any way you can.
1. Emilio Morenatti
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This morning, Emilio Morenatti, the chief photographer for the Associated Press in Spain and Portugal and Pulitzer Prize winner, tweeted an image with a caption: “People take shelter at a building basement while the sirens sound announcing new attacks in the city of Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, Feb. 25, 2022.” The image shows men, women, children and animals squeezed into a maintenance room, trying to sleep on blankets closely laid out on the concrete floor.
Morenatti initially studied graphic design, and started working as a photojournalist for a local newspaper in 1989. He has worked exclusively for the Associated Press since March 2004, and has covered conflicts in Jerusalem, Gaza and Pakistan and Afghanistan, where his left leg was blown off by a bomb blast in 2009. He has won Pulitzer and World Press Photo awards yet manages to continue to report from conflict zones despite his injuries.
2. Lynsey Addorio
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On Instagram yesterday, Lynsey Addario wrote: “Civilians often pay the highest price in war. Images from eastern Ukraine over the past few days on assignment for the New York Times.”
The images she posted focused primarily on Ukrainian women and their young children, often at train stations in and around Kiev. One image, of a woman holding her toddler, is positioned next to a man wearing a coat—a white dove, the symbol of peace, is embroidered onto his back.
Addario is considered one of the most influential photojournalists of her generation, and contributes most regularly to the National Geographic and the New York Times. She is a multiple Pulitzer-Prize winner.
Early in her career as a photojournalist, Addario began to focus on women and, often, mothers caught up in conflict, and has at times continued to report from conflict zones whilst pregnant, having to hide her condition while she worked. She has covered nearly every major conflict and humanitarian crisis of the past two decades, making sometimes distant conflicts visible, tangible and understandable.
3. Wolfgang Schwan
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From the front pages of virtually every major newspaper in the UK this morning, Helena—a primary school teacher from Chuhuiv—stares out at us. The woman is covered in blood after a missile struck her apartment and shards of glass hit her after her window blew out. The Sun ran the image with an inset of Putin, and with the headline: "Her Blood On His Hands".
The portrait was taken by Wolfgang Schwan. Yesterday, Schwan posted the image with the caption: “A residential apartment complex was struck by a Russian airstrike in Chuhuiv, Ukraine on the morning of February 24, 2022. There was one confirmed civilian casualty and several dozen injured.”
Wolfgang Schwan is a documentary photographer currently based in Philadelphia, US. He is a member of the National Press Photographers Association and is in Ukraine photographing for Anadolu Images.
4. Aris Messinis
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Aris Messinis, the chief photographer for AFP in Greece, is also reporting from Chuhuiv at this very moment.
Yesterday, he posted on Instagram the aftermath of an airstrike, including the devastating images of an elderly man mourning as he covered the body of another man, maybe a friend or relative, with a blanket.
Messinis wrote in a caption: “In the eastern Ukraine town of Chuguiv on February 24, 2022, as Russian armed forces are trying to invade Ukraine from several directions, using rocket systems and helicopters to attack Ukrainian positions in the south, the border guard service said. Russia's ground forces on Thursday crossed into Ukraine from several directions, Ukraine's border guard service said, hours after President Vladimir Putin announced the launch of a major offensive. Russian tanks and other heavy equipment crossed the frontier in several northern regions, as well as from the Kremlin-annexed peninsula of Crimea in the south, the agency said."
Aris Messinis was born in 1977 in Thessaloniki, Greece. A self-taught photographer, he started out in 1997 as a stringer for Associated Press in 1997 and has been the Chief Photographer of the photo department of AFP in Athens, Greece, since 2006. Prior to now, Messinis was best known for his images of the migrant crisis of 2018, which he covered by spending two weeks aboard an NGO boat rescuing migrants from Libya who were attempting to cross the Mediterranean in packed inflatable dinghies.
5. Chris McGrath
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The Australian photographer Chris McGrath, a veteran Getty photojournalist, posted on Tuesday this week images from the funeral of Captain Anton Olegovich Sidorov in Kyiv. One of the war's first casualties, the soldier's death was reported by Ukraine's army last Saturday.
McGrath was also invited into the home of 28 year-old Anton Lytvyn, a military reservist. McGrath captured Lytvyn as he packs and readies himself for war, with Chuchu, his pet Chinchilla, watching on. Lytvyn was called up to active duty on 23 February.
McGrath started his photography career at a regional newspaper in Queensland, Australia before joining Getty Images as a staff photographer based in Sydney. He has been on staff with the photography agency for the past 19 years, working from their New York, Singapore and Tokyo offices, and is now based out of Istanbul.
6. Erin Trieb
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Trieb, an American photojournalist and regular contributor to the New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine and National Geographic, yesterday posted from the streets of Kiev; streets both deserted and packed with traffic as people attempt to leave the city. She wrote:
“The highways and streets of Kyiv stand still in gridlock traffic as thousands of citizens try to evacuate the capital city on the first day of Russia’s full-scale military assault on Ukraine. By midday all flights, trains and buses out of the city had halted, creating traffic jams all over the country.
“Explosions and shelling were first heard across major cities in Ukraine around 5am local time Feb. 24, minutes after Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a pre-dawn televised speech from Moscow saying he was authorizing military action. By midday, Ukrainian forces battled Russian invaders on three sides—by land, sea and air—in the biggest attack on a European state since World War Two.”
Trieb describes her work as focusing on “social issue-driven topics like cultural identity, trauma from war, and feminism.” Even in the midst of war, she has the ability to find thoughtful and empathetic moments of human perseverance. As she wrote this week: “The Ukrainians I spoke with were in shock and disbelief, and many said they never thought it could actually happen. Despite the chaos and fear, people remained relatively calm and fortified.”
7. Mstyslav Chernov
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Mstyslav Chernov is a Ukrainian photographer, born in the east of the country in 1985. He has spent the last few weeks reporting from the region before the invasion proper.
On the 18th February, before the invasion had fully hit the West’s headlines, Chernov posted a picture of a young woman trying to learn how to fire a semi-automatic weapon. Her body is rocked by the force of the weapon as it fires. Her eyes are closed and her is mouth open in a mask of fear; a static moment that embodies the civilian resistance against one of the largest military powers in the world.
Chernov wrote in the caption: “An instructor trains a woman to shoot from a Kalashnikov assault rifle at a shooting range near Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, on Sunday, Feb. 6, 2022, just 40 kilometres (25 miles) from some of the tens of thousands of Russian troops massed at the border of Ukraine. After weeks of talks in various diplomatic formats have led to no major concessions by Russia and the U.S., it's unclear how much impact the trips will have.”
Chernov now works as a staff journalist for Associated Press. In 2013, he was made President of the Ukrainian Association of Professional Photographers (UAPF). He is continuing to report as the country of his birth is bombarded.
8. Mikhail Palinchak
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Like his contemporary Mstyslav Chernov, Mikhail Palinchak has spent the last few weeks capturing the build up of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border as well as the civic response from Ukrainian civilians as they come to terms with the need to fight. He was doing so long before Western correspondents arrived in the country.
On the 6th February, Palinchak posted a series of pictures of teenage boys with fake Kalashnikov rifles carved out of wood. In the snow of the Ukrainian winter, the boys were learning to fight in synchronicity; war games that would soon become real.
Palinchak published the pictures alongside the simple caption: “Military exercises for civilians, Kiev, Ukraine, February 6, 2022.” It’s sobering to think the boys in Palinchak’s pictures will now be handed a real assault rifle, and told to fight an advanced military operation.
Mikhail Palinchak was born in 1985 in Uzhgorod, a small city in Western Ukraine, and is now based in the capital Kiev. He has been a member of the Ukrainian Photographic Alternative (UPHA) since 2012 and a member of the Ukrainian Association of Professional Photographers (UAPF) since 2014. His most recent image, published today, shows an ageing man in his home, a small flat in a massive residential building that has been decimated by firepower. The man is staring around him, trying to comprehend what has happened.