On a warm Thursday afternoon in a residential area of ​​Kharkiv, Natalia Kolesnik went out to do her usual job of feeding the cats when the shelling started. But there is nothing “usual” in life near the front line in Ukraine. He became one of the three corps of civilians. Her husband Victor came running in shock. He didn’t want to let her go. He stroked her head.

“Dad, that’s it,” his son Alexander said as he watched rescuers wait for the body bag to close. “She’s dead. Get up.”

“You do not understand;” his father asked.

“What I don’t understand”; said the son. “This is my mom. Dad, please. Dad, please.”

Yevgeny Maloletka captured the dialogue and scene. Zhenya for friends. Ukrainian photojournalist. Almost no one in the general public knows his name, yet most of us, in Greece and the world, have seen the photographs he takes since the start of the war, February 24, 2022, capturing heartbreaking moments, fragments of Ukrainian everyday life, that he creates Russian aggression . The dead bodies of friends, relatives, children, which symbolize unimaginable losses, unspeakable heartache for the living, with destroyed buildings, once the hearths of peaceful everyday life, become the background of a gloomy present: “It is important for us that Greek women, other photographers and journalists, the world. .. to see what happened in Mariupol, to see what our eyes saw,” Zhenya Maloletka explains.

We talked on the phone while he was in Kharkov. What does he feel behind the lens when he captures impassive parents carrying the body of their lifeless child to the hospital, capturing a desperate look that is adjacent to the invisible hope of “wrong”?

“I could tell you that there is something like a bath of purity going on, something that makes you see the important things in life, but I only feel pain. This is what all Ukrainians feel, friends of the victims, relatives. We’ve all lost something, someone, we’re all losing something every day. My house in Biridyansk, my city in the Zaporozhye region west of Mariupol, is under occupation.”

“We are talking about artillery warfare. Right now, 5% of soldiers fight with weapons, and 95% of the war is fought with artillery.”

– I try to keep myself in a collected psychological state, pay attention and sleep, but at the same time treat it like a game in a casino. If it happens, let it happen. I can’t help but do this job. Of course I’m afraid. What I’m about to say may sound trite, but you should be wary. It is dangerous to be on the front line in this war, but I must say that the road there is even more dangerous, it is a nightmare. There are moments when, having reached the conversation with the soldiers, you feel like a mouse in a cage, a weight, a constant target. You never know when you’ll be hit. Almost everything is done under the control of drones, so wherever they see, hear, or watch something is moving, it doesn’t matter if it’s a car, a person or an enemy. You move, they aim, they bomb.

It’s about artillery warfare. Currently, 5% of soldiers fight with weapons, and 95% of the war is fought with artillery. The sound of explosions is constantly recorded, of course dangerous, but also terribly cruel. And there is no need to go to the front line or be there because Russia, which assures that it only hits military targets – and we understand that it needs to do this for the purposes of internal propaganda, for Russians – constantly hits civilian infrastructure: schools, universities, residential areas. And they never did it because they missed, by accident. They do it all the time and we are witnessing it. It doesn’t cost them anything, they don’t care.

– I do not feel anything! I just prefer to be Ukrainian! It’s much safer (laughs). The Russians are bad at aiming and do not reach their goal easily, they break agreements and rules. Twice we signed agreements, the other day they violated them. We know them from the past, we have been preparing for this war for eight years. We would like to avoid it, but in the end, the fact that part of our army was getting ready did us all good. People have not understood what has been happening in Ukraine since 2014, I think they are now beginning to understand that this is not a small-scale operation in one corner of the world. This war will get tougher as it goes on…

Mariupol Lighting Award

In February and March 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Associated Press correspondents Mislav Chernov and Yevhen Maloletka were in Mariupol, and their photos were widely used by Western media to cover the situation. On May 23, 2022, Maloletka, together with Chernov and Vasiliki Stepanenko, received the Knight International Journalism Award from the ICFJ (International Center for Journalists), and on May 29, Maloletka was awarded the Yannis Behrakis International Photojournalism Award from Athens photo World, active since 2019 under artistic direction Thanasis Stavrakis. “The name of the late Yannis Behrakis bears the stamp of the highest quality in world photojournalism, and it is a great honor for me to receive it from my wife, as the first Ukrainian to be honored with it at an event where you meet the highest quality, not only in relation to art, but also to the authority of photojournalism ”, says Xenia. “The tragedy of Mariupol will forever remain a huge scar in my heart. The award is a recognition of the work of all journalists, and especially Ukrainians, who are trying to tell the world about what is happening in our country, and a way to bring justice to the thousands who died as a result of a senseless war.”