Pregnant Irina Kalinina, lying on a stretcher, holding her stomach, wounded and pale, is taken away from the bombed-out maternity hospital. It was March 9, 2021. This is one of the most nightmarish photographs of the first weeks of Russia’s attack on Ukraine, revealing the “murder of future generations of Ukrainians.”

Today, the photo was awarded the first prize of the World Press Photo Foundation.

“Myron,” which refers to the word “peace,” meaning peace, was born stillborn nearly two weeks after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began. Half an hour later, his 32-year-old mother died, in turn.

Photo by Yevgeny Maloletka, Associated Press (AP). According to the jury of the prestigious photojournalism competition, he “removed the paranoia and horror of war” and “exposed the murders of future generations of Ukrainians.”

A Ukrainian photojournalist who claimed to have arrived an hour before the invasion of Mariupol was one of the few photographers to film the events.

“For 20 days we lived with the ambulance workers in the basement of the hospital and in shelters with residents. We tried to show the horror in which the Ukrainians lived,” he said.

Mariupol, a symbol of Ukrainian resistance, was under siege and bombardment by Russian forces for several weeks at the start of the Russian offensive.

The explosion of the maternity hospital and children’s hospital on March 9, 2022 in Mariupol shocked the whole world.

Mariupol finally fell to Russian forces in May 2022 after fierce resistance. According to Kyiv, 90% of the city was razed to the ground, where 20,000 people were killed. The European Union called the siege of Mariupol “a flagrant war crime.”

By awarding and highlighting this photo, the jury “hopes that the world will stop and recognize the unbearable truth of this war and think about the future of Ukraine.”

The award-winning photographs will be on display from 22 April at the World Press Photo Foundation’s headquarters in Amsterdam, and will then be shared with the world.

Source: RES-IPE