Reporting on Ukraine

A young Ukrainian soldier lies buried in a military cemetery in southeastern Austria beneath a gray cross cut from serpentine stone. On a withering summer day in 2023, I traveled with my partner, Emily, to the quiet town of Feldbach to visit him. He had fallen in battle near his final resting place almost 80 years earlier in the last days of World War II in Europe.

A video screenshot shows the impact of a Russian missile strike on an apartment building in Kyiv on June 2, part of a wide-scale attack across the capital and Ukraine that night. (Courtesy video provided by Ruslan Khmyz.) The malign shadow of Russia has never lifted from the path of faith that Roman Khalus began following more than a decade ago as he prepared for the priesthood.

Russian shelling destroyed a home in Petropavlivka, a village in eastern Ukraine seized by invading forces. (c. Martin Kuz) The city of Enerhodar nestles on the eastern edge of the Dnipro River in an area of southern Ukraine under Russian occupation. As the crow flies, the nearest point of land controlled by the Ukrainian military lies on the opposite bank 5 miles away. As a wartime reality, the nearest point of entry into free Ukraine for the city’s captive residents lies 1,200 miles away.

A destroyed Russian tank abandoned in a field in eastern Ukraine. (c. Martin Kuz) The TV news clip playing on Andriy Konovart’s phone showed him smiling and shirtless on a warm summer day in a past life. Outside Lviv’s regal opera house, he appeared with several of his teammates from the Dynamo water polo club to promote the sport’s national tournament taking place in the city. Wearing swim briefs and caps, the young men, lean and loose-limbed, tossed banter and a water polo ball back and forth.

A jacket lies in the rubble of a destroyed apartment building in the eastern city of Izium, which Ukrainian troops freed from Russian occupation in fall 2022. (c. Martin Kuz) Victoria Redko brought a homemade meal to her mother almost every Wednesday afternoon for a quarter-century. She prepared containers of favorite Ukrainian foods — borsch, dumplings, potato pancakes — before walking the mile to the house where she grew up and Olena Shevchenko still lived.

An abandoned baby stroller stands on a platform at the train station in the western city of Lviv on March 1, 2022, less than a week into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. (c. Martin Kuz) A dispatch from The New York Times today on Israel’s and America’s war of choice focused on people in Iran fleeing their homeland. An excerpt: Iranians trickling across the border into Turkey this week painted a picture of destruction and fear hanging over their cities under U.S.-Israeli bombardment.

A grave for a fallen soldier was prepared in Lychakiv Cemetery in Lviv on Aug. 10, 2023. (All photos c. Martin Kuz) The war that Russia launched against Ukraine four years ago today has killed upward of 140,000 Ukrainian troops. The number signifies enormous loss without revealing the true dimensions — both smaller and larger — of who and what the country has lost to preserve its freedom.

A tiled sculpture in an underground metro station in Kyiv commemorates the 1980 Summer Olympics hosted by Moscow. The Ukrainian capital was the site of early-round soccer matches for that year’s Games. (c. Martin Kuz) A striking piece of public art brightens the Olimpiiska metro station in central Kyiv. The tiled, floor-to-ceiling sculpture depicts the red and orange Olympic flame wrapping around a set of blue pillars and rising above the five interlaced rings symbolic of the Games.

Ukrainian and American flags hang outside a house in South Minneapolis earlier this month. (c. Martin Kuz) The 500 people who filled the pews of a church in downtown Minneapolis on a recent Sunday night gathered not to praise the Lord but to join the fight. They had signed up for legal observer training to learn how to shadow the thousands of masked federal forces terrorizing the city.

Tens of thousands of people took part in an anti-ICE protest in downtown Minneapolis on Jan. 30. (c. Martin Kuz) Last week I traveled to the third war zone I’ve visited during more than 30 years in journalism. As I continue reporting on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and after previously covering the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan, I flew to my hometown of Minneapolis, where the enemy forces are the country’s own.