Today I would like to begin to introduce you to my friends from Mariupol, those to whom Russia is constantly throwing bombs and starving to death shooting the Red Cross mission. I'll start with my friend Boris Борис Довганюк from whom I learned many subtleties of watercolor technique. If the paper is too white - it is treated with acids and over time the pigments will break down. Before you...

Nazarko is that diminutive form of my name that still can be pleasant for a 29-year-old man to hear.  That’s how I was called by Oleh and Konstantin. Oleh, who was nicknamed Lom, always called me his personal photographer. Some of those shots that I made for him were really good and Oleh was really delighted with them. I met Lom in 2018. At that time his division was performing some...

I have a friend who is in the navy. He is fighting and trying to survive somewhere in Mariupol. I ask non-existing God to help him somehow. I always pray for him and his health. Why do I say “non-existing God”? Because his family is waiting for him at home, a small son expects him to come every day…and suddenly my friend finds some mobile network connection. To catch it, he...

"We arrived in the Makarovsky district on the evening of the 24th, 8 people, my father-in-law, mother-in-law, their daughter with a 1.5-year-old child, husband, and his sister, and 5 cats. We came to see friends - Liza's classmate and her parents. We drove through Irpin, already you were able to hear loud sounds of explosions from Gostomel and see enemy fighter jets overhead. We realized that...

Please don’t laugh out loud!!! Our heroic police rescued not only people from bombing in Irpin, but also… a chameleon. Egyptian chameleon, damn it, Carl! The guys liked this refugee very much. Combat comrade, after all! This buddy needs at least a terrarium with different branches. Such a hero doesn’t deserve hanging on the dracaena plant, no way. Special food is also...

- We were standing at the Kharkov railway station: my husband, daughter and me. My husband has a certificate of exemption from military service due to his chronic diseases. And here… my daughter and I are let in, but he isn’t. We have all our clothes in one suitcase and all money is on one banking card. As a result, we left but he stayed at home. With no money he came back to our...

- I spent 32 days in blocked Irpin, 4 of them - in captivity. I was there while it was bombed, drew the wounded people to the safe place and buried the killed ones. Also, I helped some families to leave this place. I have lost my house but I persevered with no sentiments. I cried only once when our soldiers came to the city and said: “Glory to Ukraine” and among different voices I...

Till this time, I had seen many deaths in the hospital, corpses on the streets, dozens of bodies thrown to the mass grave. I saw so many deaths that I was filming them not taking too close to my heart. Two airstrikes targeted plastic that was used as a protection for our van. I had noticed a fire ball just before the pain struck my inner ear, my skin and my face.We saw smoke rising above the...

People started dying very fast. On 27 February we saw how the doctor was trying to rescue a little girl who was hit with shrapnel. She died. Then another child died. Then the third one. Ambulances stopped taking wounded people because there was no network connection and medical staff couldn’t be called as well as ambulances couldn’t get through bombed streets. Doctors begged us to...

I grew up in Kharkov - a Ukrainian city 30 km from the Russian border – and learnt how to use the weapon at school lessons. It made no sense to me. Ukraine was surrounded by friends, I thought. Since that time, I have been making reports on wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and in Nagorno-Karabakh. But when this winter Americans and then Europeans evacuated their embassies from Kiev and while...

“We were the only international journalists who hadn’t left Mariupol. For more than two weeks we were documenting its siege by Russian forces. We were making the report from the hospital when armed people appeared in the corridors. Surgeons gave us white coats to disguise. Suddenly at dawn a dozen of soldiers broke into the hospital: “Where are the journalists, goddamn...