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With the largest and deadliest war in Europe since the end of World War II now in its third year, the scale of the devastation wrought by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine continues to mount.
The front line is a place of ghastly violence where hundreds of thousands of Russian and Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or wounded, according to conservative Western estimates. The list of Ukrainian cities and towns largely leveled to the ground by Russian bombs and artillery grows with each passing month.
Russian forces have moved forward in small increments, sustaining a staggering number of casualties to take cities like Avdiivka, which Moscow captured in February. They are now closing in on the nearby city of Pokrovsk, a Ukrainian stronghold in the east.
In recent months, the fighting has spread to the Russian-Ukrainian border area. In early May, Russian forces launched an offensive in Ukraine’s northeast, seizing several settlements in a push near the city of Kharkiv. In August, the Ukrainian Army crossed into Russia’s western Kursk region in a surprise assault that brought the war into the Russian territory in a way never before seen, forcing tens of thousands of civilians to evacuate.
Away from the front, millions of Ukrainians have spent hours in bomb shelters as Russia rains down missiles and drones on military units and civilians across the nation. Ukraine’s energy grid, severely damaged, is working but sporadically. Thousands of schools, hospitals and cultural institutions have been damaged or destroyed. Millions have lost their homes.
For all that time, photographers with The New York Times and other news organizations have chronicled the war, capturing a slice of how soldiers and civilians have experienced it. Some images, our photographers say, will never leave them.
This gallery contains graphic images.
September
A Ukrainian rescue worker comforting a man who survived a Russian missile strike in the parking area of a department store in Kharkiv on Sept 1.
The White Angels evacuation team, a special unit of Ukraine’s national police, assisting in the evacuation of a woman in a village near the frontline in the Pokrovsk district on Sept. 3.
Evacuees from towns and villages in the Pokrovsk district on a bus after arriving at the train station in Pavlohrad, following the cessation of evacuation trains from the city of Pokrovsk on Sept 5.
A Ukrainian infantry soldier from the 109th Brigade of the Territorial Defense looking out toward Russian positions about a kilometer away in the Pokrovsk region on Sept. 8.
Rescue workers clearing debris from a military educational institution in the city of Poltava after Russia struck the area with two ballistic missiles, killing more than 50 people, on Sept. 3
Wounded Ukrainian soldiers being transferred to a hospital by members of a volunteer paramedic group, the Hospitallers, in the Dnipropetrovsk region of eastern Ukraine on Sept. 5.
An injured resident with her baby in the hallway of her apartment after five missiles struck in Pavlohrad on the morning of Sept. 6.
August
Soldiers of the 33rd Mechanized Brigade during exercises in which a Leopard 2 tank, provided by Canada, forged a river in the Pokrovsk region on Aug 31.
Russian prisoners of war inside a Ukrainian prison cell in northern Ukraine on Aug. 16.
Evacuees from the Kurakhove area waving goodbye to relatives after boarding an evacuation bus on Aug. 30.
Vehicles were set afire in front of an apartment block by a Russian bombardment in Kharkiv on Aug. 30.
A resident was in tears as she sat next to her neighbor’s belongings, which were to be transported to another region of Ukraine as they fled Pokrovsk on Aug. 27.
A Sunday church service near the Russian border on Aug. 24.
Ukrainian apartment block residents stepping over shattered glass after a Russian bombardment in Kharkiv on Aug. 30.
Ukrainian Red Cross workers helping Valentyna Ragulina, 63, onto a gurney while evacuating her from a village near the Russian border in the Sumy region on Aug. 23.
The body of a Russian soldier lying in front of the destroyed Russian border post at the Sudzha crossing on Aug. 12.
People who evacuated from the Russian border regions, including from the town of Sudzha, waiting for aid in the city of Kursk, Russia, on Aug. 13.
Damage from missile debris in Kursk on Aug. 13. Ukrainian troops began an offensive in Russia on Aug. 6. A local governor said a dozen civilians had been killed in the fighting and over 100 injured.
A local boxing club in Kursk that has turned itself into a temporary shelter for people arriving from the border with Ukraine, on Aug. 14.
Nina Klymenko, 90, being carried on a stretcher by members of a Ukrainian evacuation team and removed from her home in the village of Yunakivka in the Sumy region, roughly five miles from Ukraine’s border with Russia, on Aug. 12.
The 110-year-old Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which is on a highway between the Ukrainian cities of Kostiantynivka and Pokrovsk, on Aug. 1. The church was heavily damaged by Russian shelling the previous month.
A Ukrainian Army vehicle passing through the destroyed Russian post at the Sudzha border crossing on Aug. 12.
Veronika, a local business owner in Sloviansk, in the eastern Donetsk region of Ukraine, next to her cafe, which was destroyed in an attack on Aug. 3. The Russian rocket assault, on a highway, narrowly missed a passing civilian car.
Combat medics treating Ukrainian soldiers injured at the front lines of Toretsk and Chasiv Yar, at a stabilization point in the Donetsk region, on Aug. 3.
A visitor on Aug. 12 at memorial park in Kursk for soldiers killed in World War II. It’s now also a cemetery for troops killed since 2022 in Russia’s war in Ukraine.
July
An artillery unit of the 95th Separate Air Assault Brigade firing a D30 howitzer at Russian troops trying to capture the Ukrainian city of Toretsk, on July 13.
Ukrainian soldiers from the 58th Motorized Infantry Brigade at an underground trench position just 500 meters from Russian lines in the southern Donetsk region of Ukraine on July 21.
Volodymyr Dziubynsky, a former member of Ukraine’s national rowing team who served in the 95th Air Assault Brigade, training in Dnipro on July 2, aiming for the 2028 Los Angeles Paralympics.
Walking past a makeshift flag memorial for fallen soldiers at Independence Square in Kyiv on July 24.
Rescuers and volunteers clearing rubble and looking for survivors after a Russian missile strike on the Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital in Kyiv, on July 8.
The Police Department of Kurakhove evacuated Mykola Pylypovych, 86, and his wife, Svitlana Yakivna, 82, both disabled, from the village of Yelyzavetivka in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, on July 14.
People gathered at a kizomba dancing event in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, on July 19.
An artillery unit of the 95th Separate Air Assault Brigade preparing to fire a D30 howitzer at Russian troops trying to capture the city of Toretsk, on July 22.
Dusk amid rolling blackouts in Kyiv on July 16.
June
Petro Kozoriz mourning his son Eduard Kozoriz, 38, at the site where some hours before Eduard was killed in his vehicle during a Russian missile strike in Pokrovsk on June 24. Eduard’s son, Mark, 12, was unharmed.
Vlad, left, and Oleksandr from the Ukrainian organization East S.O.S. evacuating an elderly disabled man under heavy shelling in Toretsk on June 24.
The graves of Ukrainian war dead are reflected in a photograph of Iryna Tsybukh, a volunteer medic in Lviv, on June 3. Ms. Tsybukh was killed evacuating wounded Ukrainian soldiers north of Kharkiv last week, three days before her 26th birthday.
Ukrainian workers installing a trench system on June 28 in eastern Donetsk Oblast.
Ukrainian paramedics of the 5th Assault Brigade treating injured soldiers with drone- and shrapnel-related injuries in a stabilization point in the direction of Chasiv Yar and Bakhmut, eastern Donetsk Region, on June 28.
Olha Prokopenko, 51, far right, the wife of a fallen Ukrainian soldier, Roman Prokopenko, being embraced as she was joined by her mother-in-law, Nadia Prokopenko, 73; aunt, Larysa; and other loved ones during his funeral. He was killed on May 30, 2024 in the Vuhledar direction, Donetsk, and brought home to the city of Boryspil for his burial on June 10.
Recruits practicing trauma first aid at a training center for the Ukrainian National Guard on June 11.
Elderly disabled residents of Toretsk being evacuated by train on June 24. They were assisted by the Ukrainian organization East S.O.S.
A Ukrainian father, Serhii Mokropolov, 44, hanging out with five of his eight children in a shelter on the outskirts of Kharkiv on June 14. They were evacuated from the village of Bilyi Kolodiaz, near Vovchansk and about five miles from the border with Russia.
Yuliia grieves at the funeral of her husband Eduard Kozoriz, on June 26 in Pokrovsk. Mr. Kozoriz, 38, was killed when he was driving home with his son Mark, 12, who fortunately was unharmed, at site of a Russian missile strike on the eastern Ukrainian town of Pokrovsk which killed five people and wounded dozens more.
May
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on May 20, when he was interviewed in Kyiv by Times journalists.
Helping a resident hit by shrapnel in Shebekino, western Russia, on May 19.
Residents from Vovchansk and surrounding villages in northeastern Ukraine evacuating to the city of Kharkiv on May 14.
A dead body outside industrial buildings after a strike in Kharkiv on May 17.
Police officers evacuating a resident from the Ukrainian town of Kozacha Lopan, in the Kharkiv region near the border with Russia, on May 18.
Receiving communion during an Easter service at a church in Kostiantynivka, eastern Ukraine, on May 5.
Evacuees from villages near Vovchansk waiting at a staging point for transportation to Kharkiv on May 17.
A wounded Ukrainian soldier, whose comrade was killed by a mine explosion, recovering at a stabilization point near Vovchansk on May 25.
Firing toward Russian positions in Vovchansk on May 19.
Damage inside a home after shelling in Shebekino, Russia, on May 17.
Honor guards marching in the Kremlin at President Vladimir V. Putin’s inauguration in Moscow on May 7.
Mr. Putin after the Military Parade on Victory Day in Moscow’s Red Square on May 9.
Students from a Russian university’s military department at an exhibition of captured military hardware from NATO countries on May 6 in front of the Victory Museum in Moscow.
Residents near a bazaar area in Sumy, Ukraine, on May 2.
Achilles, the leader of the Ukrainian Army’s best-performing drone unit, in his workshop in the Donetsk region on May 4, surrounded by an arsenal of unmanned aerial vehicles used in the fight against Russian troops.
Groceries covered in dust caused by the impact of a damaged residential building hit by a Russian drone earlier this year in Sumy, on May 2.
A resident of Vovchansk being prepared for evacuation to Kharkiv, on May 11.
Destruction in the town of Lyman, in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, which has been frequently shelled by Russian forces since early spring, on May 14.
Paramedics with the 59th Separate Motorized Infantry Brigade of the Ukrainian Army evacuating a wounded soldier from the front line near Avdiivka on May 4.
Father Ivan, with the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, blessing soldiers from the 72nd Mechanized Brigade, near Vuhledar on May 5.
Lidia Stepanivna Lomikovska, 98, who walked more than 6 miles in slippers from the frontline city of occupied Ocheretyne to reach free Ukrainian territory in Volodymyrivka, Ukraine, on May 3.
April
Artem and Daria, both 21, posing for a wedding photographer in central Kharkiv on April 20, with scarred facades, cordon barriers, and boarded-up buildings and windows from nearby bombings.
Standing in the damaged School No. 134 in Kharkiv. The building was occupied by Russian special forces, who converted it into their base in 2022 for a further advance on the city before being pushed back by Ukraine’s military.
A nurse, center right, helping a mother carry her child to an ambulance during the emergency evacuation of two Kyiv hospitals on April 26 because of fears that Russia might strike the buildings with missiles.
Ukrainian soldiers from the 22nd Mechanized Brigade at a position where they operate a Soviet howitzer near Bakhmut, in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, on April 24.
A member of the 77th Brigade firing a rocket-propelled grenade during training in the Donetsk region.
Mourners at a funeral for Pavel Petrichenko, a Ukrainian soldier, at St. Michael’s Cathedral in Kyiv on April 19.
A Soviet-era memorial damaged in an overnight attack in Borova, Ukraine.
Actors waiting backstage before a performance of “The Witch of Konotop” at the Ivan Franko Theater in Kyiv on April 8.
Women participating in weapon training in Kyiv.
March
Members of the 148th Separate Artillery Brigade at their firing position in the Donetsk region.
A mother and daughter walking through their destroyed neighborhood in Myrnohrad, a town in Ukraine’s Donetsk region.
Residents of a village gathered for a church service led by Baptist pastors in the Donetsk region on March 28.
Lizi, 2, in Odesa, Ukraine. She and her father survived a strike that killed her mother and brother.
Dmytro Brenchuk, 29, a wounded Ukrainian soldier, working with Nestor Babskyi, 23, at a rehabilitation center in western Ukraine.
A cemetery in Odesa on March 19.
Soldiers including Maksym Sukhyi, 27, right, training at a firing range near Kyiv on March 16.
Former Russian soldiers who are now fighting for the Ukrainian side gathering inside a farmhouse in the Sumy region of Ukraine as they prepare to make an incursion across the border into Russia in the early hours of March 14.
Children dressed in folk attire performing skits to celebrate the 210th birthday of Taras Shevchenko, the Ukrainian poet, painter and founding father, at their school in Duliby on March 8.
A student playing guitar in a shelter during an air-raid alert in Kyiv on March 15.
A shopkeeper selling fruit and vegetables next to a destroyed store in Kurakhove.
Former Russian soldiers who are now fighting for Ukraine riding atop an armored vehicle in preparation for a planned incursion across the border into Russia on March 14.
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