*Content warning: some photos contain graphic images.
On February 24, Russia announced what it called a “special military offensive” in Ukraine, attempting to encircle the capital of Kyiv. But more than a month after the launch of the invasion, which included a convoy of tanks, troops, and artillery stretching for forty miles, Russian forces retreated from Kyiv. By early April, Ukrainian forces had secured and liberated the northern part of the country all the way to Belarus.
What remained was a devastated population and a shattered civilian infrastructure.
Bodies were steadily being recovered from the rubble over several days by rescuers and volunteers.
I traveled to Kyiv a week before the Russian retreat. Reaching the front proved difficult following the deaths of several journalists, both foreign and Ukrainian, and residents, still reeling from the destruction, were increasingly disinclined to share their stories. But after Russia retreated, recently liberated areas began to open up. Without Russian troops encircling the area, looting and killing in a coordinated act of terror, it became possible to document the aftermath.
I entered Zabuchchya, a northwestern suburb of Kyiv, with a humanitarian convoy led by twenty-six year old Sviatoslav Yurash, the youngest official in Ukraine’s parliament and a member of the country’s Territorial Defense Forces. We didn’t know then whether the Russians had fully retreated from Kyiv or not. But Yurah assured me, with a Kalashnikov rifle slung around his back, that though there may still be Russians in the area, he had personally helped chase them from a nearby forest the previous day. Outside the town, destroyed Russian armored vehicles were scattered along the highway.
Sviatoslav Yurash, twenty-six, a member of Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Forces and also the youngest member of the country’s parliament, in front of a destroyed home near Zabuchchya, Ukraine, on April 2, 2022.
On one stretch of road, the rusted remnants of a column of about eight to ten Russian armored personnel carriers and tanks appeared to have recently been ambushed by Ukrainian forces. One vehicle was still smoking. It was a gruesome scene: A dead Russian soldier stood motionless in the turret of a tank, multiple charred corpses in others, and a dismembered foot resting on the ground near another. It was unclear how Ukrainian forces destroyed the Russian column, and why the column had found itself so unwisely bunched together.
Igor, a member of Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Forces, stands on a destroyed Russian armored personnel carrier, on April 2, 2022 near Zabuchchya.
As the humanitarian convoy entered Zabuchchya, going door-to-door to hand out food and aid, many residents wept. They had experienced relentless fighting and shelling for weeks, surviving by stowing themselves away in cellars without electricity, running water, and other basic necessities.
An elderly resident of Zabuchchya weeps while receiving food from a humanitarian aid convoy on April 2, 2022.
Two days later, I arrived in Bucha, another northwestern suburb of Kyiv, where hundreds of civilians had allegedly been killed by Russian forces. A few journalists were able to enter Bucha beforehand to photograph and circulate the images of bodies, some of them with their hands tied, strewn along the city’s streets. A mass grave of 280 people was found behind the Church of St. Andrews and Pyervozvannoho All Saints.
A mass grave is seen behind the Church of St. Andrew and Pyervozvannoho All Saints in Bucha, Ukraine, on April 4, 2022.
As I walked through the town, I came across one man named Sergei who told me he was waiting for local police to arrive. He said Russian forces had shelled and ransacked his home, and that his sister’s mother-in-law was dead inside. She had refused to leave with the rest of the family when Russian forces entered Bucha; later, Sergei’s neighbors told him that the occupiers had killed her, though he was unsure of how she had died.
Discovering that I was an American photojournalist, he asked me to go inside and photograph her. With reports of Russian saboteurs leaving booby traps in homes, often under dead bodies, I entered the house tepidly. He led me to a bedroom where he showed me his dead relative on a bed with a towel covering her eyes. The image was too gruesome to be published.
The kitchen in Sergei's home in Bucha, Ukraine, on April 4, 2022.
Elsewhere in Bucha, on a long road with a bridge that connected the town to Irpin, another devastated northwestern suburb of Kyiv, destroyed and partially shelled commercial and residential buildings lined both sides of a street, along with destroyed Russian armored vehicles and a disabled Ukrainian tank. Metal, cement fragments, and shell casings of all sizes littered the street and sidewalks. Two burned civilian corpses rested on a railway track on the Irpin side of the bridge.
On the Bucha side of the bridge, the body of a dead elderly man sat in the grass near the sidewalk. A man approached me as I photographed, asking what I was doing. He said that his name was Konstanyn, and that the victim was his father. Like Sergei, he had just entered the town that day and was waiting for local authorities to retrieve his father’s body. He said that his father had been dead for about three days, but the cause of death was yet unknown. He answered a few questions before tearing up and walking back to his car. When I returned later that day, Konstantyn and his father’s body were both gone.
A dead civilian is seen on the grass in Bucha, Ukraine, on April 5, 2022. A man who claimed he was the victim’s son said the victim’s name was Leontiy Dokichuk.
At the Antonov Airport in the small suburb of Hostomel, which had been taken over by Russian forces and then later retaken by the Ukrainians, destroyed Russian tanks and trucks spread around the entire airport grounds. Shell holes marked the pavement, some with spent rockets still stuck in the cement. In one enormous open air hangar, the world’s largest (and now destroyed) aircrafts, the Ukrainian Antonov An-225, was parked under a metal roof filled with shrapnel holes.
The destroyed Ukrainian Antonov An-225 under an open air hangar at the Antonov Airport in Hostomel, Ukraine, on April 5, 2022.
Destroyed armored and unarmored vehicles, a 152mm howitzer, shell casings, and other metal fragments were scattered about a large runway adjacent to the aircraft. The wind was so strong that day that some strips of the damaged metal roof over the aircraft flapped in the wind, creating an ominous howling sound.
What appeared to be a 152mm Russian howitzer rests at the destroyed Antonov International Airport in Hostomel, Ukraine, on April 5, 2022.
In Borodyanka, a town of about 12,000 people thirty miles northwest of Kyiv, I saw multiple destroyed high-rise apartment buildings, many of which were split in two by heavy Russian artillery and air strikes. In one building, a local said she had heard that residents had thrown Molotov cocktails at the Russian occupiers; in response, Russian soldiers struck the building, killing dozens of civilians.
Volunteers clean the streets of debris near a bombed building in Borodyanka, Ukraine, on April 7, 2022.
Bodies were steadily being recovered from the rubble over several days by rescuers and volunteers. In another building, also broken apart, authorities estimated that forty civilians remained in the rubble. Local residents were seen outside the building waiting for rescuers to find their missing loved ones.
A small Ukrainian unit later took me to an abandoned Russian camp in a patch of forest on a farm outside of Makariv, a town to the west of Kyiv. We saw dozens of foxholes, a destroyed Russian armored personnel carrier, a BM-21 Grad truck-mounted rocket launcher, Russian military fatigues, MREs, water and beer bottles, and other items strewn about the grass and dirt.
An armored personnel carrier, foxhole, rations, and clothing are seen at an abandoned Russian military camp near Makariv, Ukraine, on April 7, 2022.
In one section of the camp, we stumbled on the body of what appeared to be a male civilian wearing jeans. He was face down in the grass next to a few trees and appeared to have had his hands tied behind his back. His age and cause of death were unknown, but the Ukrainians said the Russians had killed him. A Ukrainian man working as a fixer prayed next to the victim's body, asking me, “Why?”
A Ukrainian man named Maxim prays next to a dead male with his hands bound at an abandoned Russian camp near Makariv on April 7, 2022. Ukrainian service members said the victim was a Ukrainian civilian who was killed by Russian troops.
It was unclear how or why the Russians retreated from the camp, but there were signs that it had been hit by Ukrainian forces. One member of the Territorial Defense Forces told me that some Russians had likely escaped during the attack, and they suspected that some may have even slipped into stolen civilian clothes and mixed into the area population.
As the destruction and rubble is being cleared, the civilian death toll from the Russian occupation around Kyiv continues to rise. The war in the north has cooled, but it continues to rage in the east and south.