#vasilisa stepanenko

[tomorrowusa]

The Oscar for best documentary feature went to 20 Days in Mariupol. It documents the horrors of Russian war crimes in the early stages of Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine.

Rather than have me tell you about it, you can watch the entire film right here.

If you live in a Congressional district represented by a Republican, contact him/her and describe the contents of the documentary. And ask: Why are you helping Putin commit war crimes?

Not sure who represents you? Use your ZIP+4 to find out here…

Find Your Representative

You'll find contact info at your Rep's site.

[damnhitsuzen]

Watch 20 days of Mariupol.

To quote Mstyslav in the documentary, it's painful to watch. But it has to be painful.

It will be absolutely horrifying experience you will never forget. You might want to though.

But that's precisely why people should see it. All those "never again" are worth nothing, if you don't know what will happen after "again".

BAFTA speech by Mstyslav Chernov after receiving award for Best documentary for "20 days in Mariupol".

Joining him on stage photographer Yevhen Maloletka, producer and journalist Vasilisa Stepanenko who worked with Mstyslav and PBS producers.

[mariacallous]

“My brain will desperately want to forget all this,” narrates journalist Mstyslav Chernov over footage he filmed of city workers adding bodies to a mass grave in Mariupol, “but the camera will not let it happen.”

At the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Chernov, along with his Associated Press colleagues, photographer Evgeniy Maloletka and field producer Vasilisa Stepanenko, were the last international media left reporting from the besieged city of Mariupol. Those who remained within the city faced significant risks as Russian forces advanced.

The footage they captured for the AP, including famous scenes from the aftermath of the Russian airstrike on a maternity hospital on March 9, 2022, horrified the world and arguably contributed to mobilizing international aid for Ukraine.

The documentary film "20 Days in Mariupol" pieces together this footage in chronological order. It earned a nomination for Best Documentary Feature Film at this year's Oscars, which are scheduled to air on March 10, and there's a strong likelihood that the film will win.

The Oscar nomination is a first for Ukrainian cinema and a victory for “20 Days in Mariupol” would be a historic milestone for Ukrainian culture during the country's darkest hour. But many are hoping that it will also bring renewed global focus on the stark brutality of Russia's war crimes as the full-scale war enters its third year.

Creeping horror

Prior to the full-scale invasion, Mariupol was home to around 540,000 people and  considered one of the largest cities in Ukraine, according to data in a report published by Human Rights Watch, Truth Hounds, and SITU Research this February. Mariupol��s residents endured relentless bombardments for eight weeks until the city fell under total Russian occupation in May 2022. The city’s destruction is one of the first major war crimes committed by Russia during its all-out war against Ukraine.

The authors from the report “Our City Was Gone: Russia’s Devastation of Mariupol, Ukraine” estimate that around 400,000 of the city’s residents were able to flee the city by mid-May 2022. However, those who remained “were left for months without basic services, including electricity, running water, and health care.”

The exact death toll from Russia’s siege on Mariupol is unknown given that the city remains under occupation. Official estimates range between 10,000 and 25,000 people, but the actual number is likely higher.

Critical infrastructure was targeted by Russian forces early on in the siege, meaning that Mariupol’s residents were left “without (widespread) access to running water, electricity, gas, heating, telecommunications, or information about what was happening around them in the city or the broader (war).”

The report also incorporates testimonies from multiple survivors, giving added context to what viewers see in “20 Days in Mariupol.” For example, there is the testimony of  a 57-year-old English teacher who sought refuge with her husband at the city’s Regional Intensive Care Hospital. The woman suffered a broken arm during the Russian shelling of her neighborhood, while her husband sustained injuries to his face, jaw, and legs, rendering him unable to eat or speak. Doctors in the city increasingly struggled to provide sufficient medical care to patients such as the couple, as the city was under a blockade, and their supplies were rapidly diminishing. They were soon compelled to conduct amputations for the more severely injured patients under improvised anesthesia. Patients moved to the basement after the Regional Intensive Care Hospital was targeted by Russian forces on March 13. “There were hundreds of people in the basement. It’s hard to figure out how many. The basement was packed. There were mattresses and we had some ventilation. But there was only a little light, no water, and no toilets. The hospital had a generator, so we sometimes had electricity,” the woman recalled.

The bodies of at least 10 people who later died from their injuries or other complications had to be removed from the basement, the woman added.

The authors of the report collected multiple testimonies of how Russian forces deliberately targeted civilians.

A member of the Mariupol City Council, Halyna Morokhovska, managed a shelter for civilians that was targeted by Russian forces on March 15, 2022. There were 172 people in the building at the time of the attack.

“There was a lot of shelling, lots of loud explosions ... Suddenly I heard a long hum, like a ‘uuuuuuuuuuuuu’ sound, and then my ears were ringing. I was later told that there was a large crater in front of the building,” Morokhovska said.

“Then I saw (a woman) buried under bricks, with parts of her body sticking out. The right-hand side of my body, especially my leg, had been badly injured by shrapnel. My thigh and my face were bleeding, and blood was flowing into my eyes and mouth.”

‘Film how these f**kers are killing civilians’

“20 Days in Mariupol” captures all this horror as it begins to unfold. Having previously reported on Russia’s attempts to take the city in 2014, Chernov and his colleagues knew that it would once again become a target and decided to return there in 2022.

The first death seen on film is at a hospital on the city’s outskirts, located just a few kilometers from the front line.

Russian forces had not yet entered the city, but the sound of fighter jets overhead and increased shelling prompted residents to seek shelter wherever they could find it.

As Chernov explains to the tense soldiers at the hospital perimeter that he has to film because it is a "historic war," their conversation is interrupted by the arrival of an ambulance. Inside, paramedics are desperately trying to save a four-year-old girl.

“My baby, oh God,” her mother wails. “Please save my child.”

Chernov follows them with his camera as she is transported onto a gurney and brought inside the hospital. After a few minutes, it becomes clear that the little girl cannot be saved, leading to increasing emotional distress among the doctors and nurses.

“It’s good that the press is here,” one of the doctors says angrily. “Film how these f***kers are killing civilians. That’s how (Russia) ‘saves’ people.”

The little girl’s name was Anhelina. Throughout the film, Chernov tries to name the victims whenever he can in his voiceover narration, so that they are not perceived by the viewer as mere statistics.

The deaths of multiple children — including infants — are seen in the film along with the heart-wrenching sight of grieving parents struggling to come to terms with their loss. In one scene, a teary-eyed girl timidly confesses in a shelter that she’s afraid and doesn't want to die. These are perhaps the most difficult scenes to sit through — but they are also important as they underscore the sheer brutality of Russia’s war.

While it might be viewed by some as a controversial decision, the film also chooses not to shy away from the darker moments of the siege on Mariupol. For example, a distressed woman watches helplessly as her store is looted by locals. There are also some Mariupol residents who, due to the spread of misinformation, believe that it’s the Ukrainian army attacking them.

However, there are many more Mariupol residents who declare to the camera — either through tears or anger — that they don’t want their city to be part of Russia.

As Chernov notes in his voiceover narration, war has a way of amplifying a person’s character. After the credits roll in "20 Days in Mariupol," the viewer will inevitably ponder the fate of each individual depicted in the film ��� whether they succeeded in escaping the city, currently live under occupation, or were later killed by Russian forces.

Getting the truth out

Russia's war against Ukraine has been frequently called "the most documented war in history" because of the extensive footage captured since Feb. 24, 2022. But the pervasive nature of Russian propaganda has led some to still not fully grasp the horror of the violence Russia has inflicted upon Ukraine.

This is a problem that “20 Days in Mariupol” acknowledges, ending with footage of Russia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya being confronted by journalists about the footage Chernov, Maloletka, and Stepanenko captured in Mariupol.

Nebenzya tells reporters that there are “so many fakes” and complains about a so-called information war against Russia. Chernov juxtaposes this in the film with footage of Mariupol city residents navigating through a completely destroyed urban landscape, highlighting the grim reality of Russia's "liberation."

Russia's global-scale information war persists as Ukrainian civilians nationwide face repeated targeting through shelling, missiles, and drone strikes.

On Jan. 3, the Emilia Romagna Cultural Association announced an event in the Italian city of Modena focusing on the purported "rebirth" of Mariupol and Russia's claimed "rapid reconstruction" efforts in the occupied city.

The Facebook post about the event, which was written in both Italian and Russian, referred to Russia’s “liberation” of Mariupol. Russian Ambassador to Italy Dmitry Shodin and Eliseo Bertolasi, an Italian journalist with pro-Kremlin leanings, were scheduled as speakers.

Thanks to pushback from Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry and the Ukrainian community in Italy, Modena city officials revoked permission for the event on Jan. 9. But the fact that it was even approved in the first place points to the urgency of not letting the world forget about Russia's ongoing war crimes against Ukrainian civilians.

Tetyana Denford and Darya Zorka, who translated the film into English for Frontline PBS, wanted to do their part to help reveal the truth about what happened in Mariupol, despite the emotional toll they knew it would take on them.

“We’d only recently found out about the Russian atrocities in the Kyiv region (when we got hold of the footage) and we knew that Mariupol was likely much worse,” Zorka told the Kyiv Independent.

“However, we didn’t fully understand the scale of destruction and Russian barbarism until we saw the raw footage from the city.”

It would sometimes take Zorka two hours to translate a two-minute segment because she couldn’t stop crying. Likewise, Denford began to consult a therapist because she realized that the second-hand trauma she experienced from watching the footage was affecting her day-to-day life.

“But I realized how urgent this was, and I became sort of robotic in my work. I couldn't stop until I finished whatever I had on my desk that day, as long as it took,” Denford said.

The announcement of the film's Oscar nomination in mid-January represents a significant milestone for Ukrainian culture amid an ongoing war for the country's survival. For the two translators, it’s important that more people will now be talking about what’s happening in Ukraine at a point when coverage of the war is dwindling from international news cycles.

“It just shows you that creativity, art, cinema… these are ways where people can learn more of the truth, instead of just watching the news unfold. We can reach people with these ways on a much bigger scale,” Denford said.

“You just have to be human, and believe that people have a right to tell their stories. We all just have to give each other the space and respect to tell our truth. Otherwise, we have nothing left.” At the same time, this achievement comes at a great cost to Ukraine and has been followed by countless other atrocities, such as the Bucha massacre, the discovery of mass graves in liberated Izium, and the brutal Russian capture of cities like Bakhmut and Avdiivka.

“I would give all the Oscars in the world for the people of Mariupol to be alive and just live their lives like the rest of us,” Zorka said.

“No Oscar can return the tens of thousands of people killed or heal the millions of those who witnessed unspeakable horrors.”

[mikeo56]

Witness - by Mr. Fish

Films about war, shorn of the bone crushing fear, the putrid stench of the corpses, the deafening noise of explosions, the constant exhaustion and the nervous anxiety that comes with trying to understand what is happening in the terrifying chaos, are pale and inadequate reflections of the vast enterprise of industrial slaughter. And these are the good films, of which there are only a few. 

Most feature war films and documentaries, from The Sands of Iwo Jima to Saving Private Ryan, are war pornography. They romanticize those wielding the terrible instruments of death. They justify the unjustifiable. They pay homage to the war machine. They entice naïve young men and women into becoming cannon fodder. They distort the public’s perception of war, leaving those who return from war and attempt to speak the awful truth alienated and ignored. 

Those in war who do the fighting, endowed with a god-like power to kill, are a minority. The real face of war is the hardship and grief suffered by civilians caught up in the maw of destruction. Their stories are hard to hear. Their fate is hard to see, which is why images from war are always sanitized. If we truly saw war, it would be so shocking, so disturbing, so disgusting, war would be hard to wage. The best accounts of war, for these reasons, eschew scenes of combat. 

The documentary “20 Days in Mariupol,” a chronicle of the first 20 days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, captures what I witnessed as a war correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. It fails, as all films about war must fail, but it succeeds where few films about war succeed. It relentlessly rips back the veil on war - fatally wounded children and pregnant women torn apart by shell fragments; the frantic and doomed efforts of doctors to save them; the shrieks and lamentations of those cradling the bloodied bodies of the dead; the collapse of the social order once the fragile structures of a civil society cease to exist and looting and pillage become a way to survive. In war there are only predators and prey. 

War is ugly and tawdry. Violence creates nothing. It only destroys — human beings, animals, schools, homes and apartment blocks, hospitals, bridges. It is the purest expression of death. All the forces that nurture and sustain life — familial, civil, social, cultural, ecological — are slated for obliteration. 

Associated Press video journalist Mstyslav Chernov and his colleagues, photographer Evgeniy Maloletka and producer Vasilisa Stepanenko, documented the first three weeks of the Russian assault on the port city of Mariupol. The three Ukrainian reporters were the only ones from a foreign news agency to remain in the city. The movie draws from 25 hours of film, only 40 minutes of which were transmitted to the AP editors. Much of the footage, even if it could all have been transmitted, would never have been disseminated. It is too graphic.

The film focuses exclusively on Russian atrocities. It ignores those committed by Ukrainians. I covered enough wars to know there were some. The neo-Nazi Azov Regiment, and other fascist-inspired militias, played a major role in the fighting in Mariupol. These militias have been accused of terrorizing and executing ethnic Russians and those suspected of sympathizing or working with separatists. The Azov Regiment’s symbol is a black “Wolfsangel,” an emblem used by Nazi units in World War II. The regiment embraces the fascist ideology of blood and soil. The fascist militias are absent in the film. This is by design. The journalists do not address the plight of ethnic Russians, although Mariupol is a largely Russian-speaking city. While most in the city consider themselves to be Ukrainian, almost half also identify as Russian. These ethnic Russians usually blame the war in the Donbas, which has been raging since 2014 and where the city is located, on the government in Kyiv. 

What happened to the ethnic Russians and separatists the Ukrainians considered collaborators? Were Ukrainian military units using hospitals as bases of operations in violation of the Geneva Conventions? There were scenes of armed Ukrainian soldiers in hospital corridors. The documentary leaves these questions unanswered. 

It is not that what we see in the film is not true. Rather, it is that the film omitted what would not reflect well on Ukraine. When you depend on military units for protection and logistics you censor your reporting. If the reporters had reported on the abuses and atrocities carried out by Ukrainian units the protection they received would have been withdrawn. As much as I admire the documentary, the lie of omission is still a lie. It is the most common lie told in war. Only reporters who dare to report without embedding in military units are free to report the truth. But this is very dangerous and lonely work. This willful self-censorship is a serious flaw in the film, but it does not distract from the power of the visceral footage or the courage of the reporters.  

There are almost no scenes of combat other than the burning remains of an anti-aircraft battery, the thud and explosion of Russian shells, the billows of black smoke, the roar of Russian jets, the distant rattle of machine guns and the occasional Ukrainian soldier firing down a deserted street. 

The film, as all films about war should, focuses on the human detritus. We see elderly men and women, who have lost their homes and possessions, boiling snow to get water. We see bewildered civilians huddled in basements. We see the shelling of a maternity hospital and graphic pictures of wounded and dead pregnant women. We see the frantic efforts, which fail, to save gravely wounded children, including a 4-year-old girl named Evangelina. We see the wailing mothers and fathers who clutch the bodies of their dead children, kissing them one last time before wrapping up their small, pale corpses. We see the rows of corpses in the hospital basement. We see the tears of medics and doctors as they struggle fruitlessly to save lives. We see the heroic work of firefighters and then we see some of their dust covered lifeless bodies in the bombed out remains of their firehouse. We see the freshly dug trenches where the dead, including those of children, are piled one on top of the other, at first wrapped in green garbage bags and later dumped unceremoniously into the pit as exposed corpses. 

“War is like an X-ray: all human innards are visible,” a doctor says in the film. “Good people become better. Bad people become worse.”

We also see the daily life of war reporters. Reporters intrude into the lives of those who have undergone unspeakable tragedies and trauma. Many of those filmed feel as if they are being treated by the press like exotic zoo animals, on display for cameras and foreign audiences. They spit venom at the reporters. “Prostitutes,” one enraged father snaps at the journalists. There is a mercenary quality to our work, however important it is to tell the story. While we chronicle the horror we are usually numb, although what we see and hear comes back to haunt us, especially at night, for the rest of our lives.

By the 11th day of the assault, with the Russians blockading the city from all three sides, the AP journalists must, at great risk, defy the curfew to hunt for a wireless connection. The life of a war reporter is consumed by these kinds of logistics, trying to get from one location to the next, trying to find out what is happening, trying to get a satellite or cell phone connection so pictures and reports can be sent. 

War reporters have a privileged status. We have powerful institutions that support us. We do not go hungry. We have body armor and armored cars. Those with far less protection and resources ensure we are protected and evacuated so the story can be told. Reporters and photographers, of course, can be wounded and killed. But our chances of survival are enhanced by our status. Volodymyr, a police officer, takes tremendous risks to help extract the AP journalists from a hospital surrounded by the Russian forces. He assists the journalists in escaping the city with their footage. We accept this status. We rationalize to ourselves that we deserve it. But we also are acutely aware that those whose stories we tell are often abandoned and that no matter the risks, no matter how many atrocities we document the world is largely indifferent. By the time the Russians took Mariupol an estimated 25,000 people were dead.

“Thousands have died,” says Chernov, who narrates the film. “We keep filming, but everything stays the same.” He refers to the forlorn hope of  Volodymyr, who said that “the image of a dead child will change the war, but we have seen so many deaths, how can we change anything?”

War reporters live with profound shame and guilt, as Chernov admits in the film. Few war reporters are neutral observers. We take the risks we take because we want justice. We want those who ordered and committed these crimes to be held accountable. Stories I wrote for The New York Times documenting Bosnian Serb atrocities were used as evidence in the International Court in the Hague to prosecute war criminals. This is why I wrote them. Chernov says in the film that he hopes one day his images will also bring some of the perpetrators to justice.

There is a brief clip of the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, claiming that the images transmitted by the AP reporters from the bombed maternity hospital in Mariupol were staged, carried out by actors. 

Brazen lies are always the official answer to the crimes we expose. The Israeli government has turned lying into an art form. Israeli soldiers indiscriminately murder Palestinian civilians, including children, and blame the Palestinians for their own deaths or Hamas for using them as human shields or insist the civilians were combatants. During the war in Sarajevo the besieging Bosnian Serbs tried to float the lie that Bosnian army snipers in Sarajevo were killing their own civilians to garner international support, as if a city being peppered with constant sniper fire and hundreds of shells a day lacked adequate numbers of wounded and dead. 

The film is mostly chronological. Each day is documented as the Russian forces tighten the noose. Those interviewed in earlier parts of the film appear later, sometimes as corpses. Death is a constant companion. You look for someone, even a friend, and find out they no longer exist. The film does a masterful job of communicating the randomness of death, the indiscriminate fury of modern weapons and the helplessness of those caught in war’s blood-soaked embrace. It isn’t war. But it comes as close as you can get.

[home-inspiration-blog]

Overnight Russian attack on Ukraine kills 15 and injures 156

By SAMYA KULLAB and VASILISA STEPANENKO KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — An overnight Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed 15 people and injured 156, local officials said Tuesday, with the main barrage demolishing a nine-story Kyiv apartment building in the deadliest attack on the capital this year. Related Articles Trump is at a moment of choosing as Israel looks for more US help…

[cavenewstimestoday]

At least 9 dead in drone strikes after US and Ukraine sign minerals deal

World 1 / 5 People with Ukrainian flags and banners attend a rally of families of missing soldiers from the Bakhmut garrison in Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, May 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Vasilisa Stepanenko) In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, firefighters put out the fire at an apartment house following Russia’s air raid in Odesa, Ukraine, Thursday, May 1, 2025. (Ukrainian…

[summeroffice]

Mykhailo Podolyak in the red room at the Natsionalny hotel. Video by Vasilisa Stepanenko.

[andronetalks]

Ukraine is releasing thousands of prisoners so they can join the fight against Russia

AP News BY VASILISA STEPANENKO, EVGENIY MALOLETKA AND DEREK GATOPOULOSUpdated 1:10 AM EDT, July 1, 2024 DNIPROPETROVSK REGION, Ukraine (AP) — At a rural penal colony in southeast Ukraine, several convicts stand assembled under barbed wire to hear an army recruiter offer them a shot at parole. In return, they must join the grueling fight against Russia. “You can put an end to this and start a new…

[kragnir]

State sponsored murders, rapes, tortures, slavery, terrorism, genocides … nothing’s changed in mafia land in 800 years. No wonder other underdeveloped crap holes on this planet call mafia land their best pal.

[higherentity]

[thecurvycritic]

20 Days at Mariupol is an In Your Face Document of Ukraninan War

Children should love to grow old and parents shouldn't have to grieve for an eternity. War is an atrocity that has been grittily captured with this doc and I will never be the same #20daysatMariupol #sundance2023

Wars don’t start with explosions. They start with silence. No knows this better than the people of Ukraine.  Their lives have been uprooted and blown apart the same way their beloved country has and for what?  Money? Power?  Are human lives the price we pay for peace? On the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a team of Ukrainian journalists  lead by Mstyslav Chernov, Evgeniy Maloletka and…

[tomorrowusa]

A documentary about Russian war crimes committed early in Putin's invasion of Ukraine is up for an Oscar.

A documentary made by three of the last journalists to escape Mariupol as Russian forces destroyed the city in spring 2022 has been nominated for an Academy Award.

The documentary “20 Days In Mariupol,” made by Mstyslav Chernov, Evgeniy Maloletka and Vasilisa Stepanenko and co-produced by Michelle Mizner and Raney Aronson-Rath of the Associated Press, was nominated in the Best Documentary Feature Film category at this year’s upcoming Oscars. The documentary tells the story of the first days of the Russian invasion of Mariupol, which is now fully controlled by Kremlin forces after a merciless assault that left tens of thousands of people dead. While Russia has blamed Ukraine for the city’s destruction, “20 Days In Mariupol” is a unique chronicle of what actually happened in the early days of Moscow’s full-scale invasion. Ukrainian citizens survived in basements, their food and water supplies cut off, while Kremlin troops bombed hospitals, theaters, and other civilian infrastructure. The 96th Academy Awards ceremony will be held on March 10 in Los Angeles. Last year, a film about imprisoned Russian dissident Alexei Navalny won in the documentary category.

Unlike "Barbie", "Oppenheimer", and "Maestro", the film “20 Days In Mariupol" can currently be viewed free online at YouTube.

After watching that, I feel Vladimir Putin should spend the rest of his days in a sealed room with a Ramsay Bolton wannabe.

Today is Day 700 of Putin's 3-day "special operation".

[leeenuu]

Streets are flooded in Kherson, Ukraine, Wednesday, June 7, 2023 after the walls of the Kakhovka dam collapsed. Residents of southern Ukraine, some who spent the night on rooftops, braced for a second day of swelling floodwaters on Wednesday as authorities warned that a Dnieper River dam breach would continue to unleash pent-up waters from a giant reservoir. (AP Photo/Libkos)

Russian rockets are launched against Ukraine from Russia's Belgorod region, seen from Kharkiv, Ukraine, late Sunday, June 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Vadim Belikov)

Volunteers evacuate dogs and goats from the flooded city in Kherson, Ukraine, Wednesday, June 7, 2023. Floodwaters from a collapsed dam kept rising in southern Ukraine on Wednesday, forcing hundreds of people to flee their homes in a major emergency operation that brought a dramatic new dimension to the war with Russia, now in its 16th month. (AP Photo/Libkos)

A woman identifying the body of her 34-year-old daughter, who was killed in an overnight missile strike in Kyiv on Thursday, June 1, 2023. (Nicole Tung/The New York Times)

Local resident Tetiana holds her pets, Tsatsa and Chunya, as she stands inside her house that was flooded after the Kakhovka dam blew up overnight, in Kherson, Ukraine, Tuesday, June 6, 2023. Ukraine on Tuesday accused Russian forces of blowing up a major dam and hydroelectric power station in a part of southern Ukraine that Russia controls, risking environmental disaster. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

People look at a fire on the top of residential building following a drone attack, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, May 20, 2023. Russian air attacks have escalated to near-nightly raids over the last month. The attacks come at night, when most in Kyiv are sound asleep. The sirens wail across the Ukrainian capital, rousing bleary-eyed residents, who, after 15 months of war, have customized individual routines to cope with Russia’s latest air campaign. (AP Photo/Alex Babenko)

Dead fish are seen on the drained bottom of the Nova Kakhovka reservoir after the Nova Kakhovka dam breached in the village of Marianske in Dnipropetrovsk region, Ukraine, Wednesday, June 7, 2023. (REUTERS/Sergiy Chalyi)

Children attend a group therapy class at the recovery camp for children and their mothers affected by the war near Lviv, Ukraine, Wednsday, May 3, 2023. A generation of Ukrainian children have seen their lives upended by Russia's invasion of their country. Hundreds of kids have been killed. For the survivors, the wide-ranging trauma is certain to leave psychological scars that will follow them into adolescence and adulthood. UNICEF says an estimated 1.5 million Ukrainian children are at risk of mental health issues. (AP Photo/Vasilisa Stepanenko)

Police evacuate local residents from a flooded area after the Nova Kakhovka dam breached in Kherson, Wednesday, June 7, 2023 (REUTERS/Ivan Antypenko)

Ukrainian emergency workers wearing radiation protection suits attend training in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, Wednesday, June 7, 2023. The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, Europe’s biggest, relies in large part on water from the now-emptying reservoir at the Kakhovka dam. The U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency reported “no immediate risk to the safety of the plant,” whose six reactors have been shut down for months but still need water for cooling. (AP Photo/Andriy Andriyenko)

[best2daynews]

AP wins Polk award for coverage of Russia’s war on Ukraine - best today news

NEW YORK — Four Associated Press journalists have been honored with the George Polk Award for War Reporting for their searing coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which Ukrainian officials have credited with saving many lives. AP videojournalist Mstyslav Chernov, photographer Evgeniy Maloletka, video producer Vasilisa Stepanenko and reporter Lori Hinnant were awarded for producing what the…

[insideusnet]

In '20 Days in Mariupol' Doc, the Horrors of War Illuminated : Inside US

PARK CITY, Utah (AP) — Associated Press video journalist Mstyslav Chernov had just broken out of Mariupol after covering the first 20 days of the Russian invasion of the Ukrainian city and was feeling guilty about leaving. He and his colleagues, photographer Evgeniy Maloletka and producer Vasilisa Stepanenko, had been the last journalists there, sending crucial dispatches from a city under a…

[home-inspiration-blog]

Russia launches another large-scale drone and missile attack on Ukraine, killing 3 and wounding 13

By VASILISA STEPANENKO and SAMYA KULLAB, Associated Press KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia attacked two Ukrainian cities with waves of drones and missiles early Tuesday, killing three people and wounding at least 13 in what President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called “one of the biggest” strikes in the 3-year-old war. The attack struck Kyiv and the southern port city of Odesa. In an online statement,…