27 sharp splinters to remind the war is not over. An exhibition honoring Ukrainian journalists opened in Vilnius

A woman dies while the pho­to­graph of her receives world recog­ni­tion

In the right wing of Vil­nius Rail­way Sta­tion, 27 pho­tographs tak­en in 2022 and 2023 in Ukraine are on dis­play. 27 reminders that the hor­rors are not over. 27 sharp splin­ters that can hurt, but make it impos­si­ble to look away. Behind each frame is a dra­ma that con­veys the mag­ni­tude of the tragedy through the per­son­al sto­ries of the char­ac­ters.

“Two years and one day ago, I could­n’t even imag­ine a full-scale inva­sion,” said BAJ chair­man Andrei Bas­tunets at the exhi­bi­tion’s open­ing. “But I was cer­tain that jour­nal­ists would ful­fill their pro­fes­sion­al duty in the most chal­leng­ing cir­cum­stances, even at the cost of their own lives. We see this war through the eyes of reporters. This exhi­bi­tion is a trib­ute to their pro­fes­sion­al­ism and a trib­ute to those who sac­ri­ficed them­selves or suf­fered dur­ing the ter­ri­ble events.”

“The exhi­bi­tion is a dis­play of sol­i­dar­i­ty and an oppor­tu­ni­ty to sup­port Ukrain­ian jour­nal­ists who work in dif­fi­cult con­di­tions,” said Ricar­do Gutier­rez, Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, who joined the cer­e­mo­ny by tele­phone. “Thanks to inter­na­tion­al sup­port, they can con­tin­ue their work.”

He also thanked his Belaru­sian and Lithuan­ian col­leagues for orga­niz­ing the exhi­bi­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly BAJ chair­man Andrei Bas­tunets and his deputy Barys Haret­s­ki.

“They under­stand from lived expe­ri­ence the impor­tance of sol­i­dar­i­ty dur­ing chal­leng­ing times,” stat­ed Ricar­do Gutier­rez.

Evgeniy Mal­o­let­ka took one of the most famous pho­tos in Mar­i­upol dur­ing the city’s most ter­ri­ble days. The Asso­ci­at­ed Press pho­to­jour­nal­ist’s lens cap­tured a preg­nant woman injured in Russ­ian shelling of a mater­ni­ty hos­pi­tal. The snap­shot was pub­lished by many world media out­lets. It became one of the most repli­cat­ed, and a year lat­er the World Press Pho­to jury named it the best. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the woman in the famous pho­to suf­fered a trag­ic fate. Iry­na Kalin­i­na’s son was still­born, and she passed away just half an hour after giv­ing birth. The child was named Myron in hon­or of peace [‘myr’ in Ukrain­ian].

Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da attempt­ed to dis­cred­it evi­dence of Russ­ian army crimes by claim­ing that Iry­na Kalin­i­na sur­vived the shelling of the mater­ni­ty hos­pi­tal and was part of a staged event. But Russ­ian fraud­sters have not suc­ceed­ed. The reporters found the wom­an’s hus­band and got indis­putable evi­dence from three doc­tors.

Evgeniy Mal­o­let­ka had to escape from the occu­pied city. This is a sep­a­rate sto­ry. When neigh­bor­ing build­ings were occu­pied by the ene­my, he spent the night with a col­league in the hos­pi­tal. The next morn­ing, Ukrain­ian spe­cial forces evac­u­at­ed him.

“We left in some­one else’s car, we had a fam­i­ly with us who helped us. There were six peo­ple in the small Hyundai Accent. The car had no side win­dows, the wind­shield was cracked, vis­i­bil­i­ty was lim­it­ed, and the front line was crossed with lights off. It was extreme­ly dan­ger­ous,” Evgeniy Mal­o­let­ka rec­ol­lect­ed lat­er.

“While now the most crucial thing is sitting in the trenches, in the future, people will learn about this reality from pictures”

The Vil­nius exhi­bi­tion is unique in that it show­cas­es the pho­tog­ra­phers behind the poignant pho­tos, who are often over­looked. For exam­ple, Yan Dobronosov, who worked in the par­lia­ment press corps since 2014 and quick­ly switched to being a war cor­re­spon­dent.

“I am tak­ing part in Ukraine’s fight for free­dom,” shares the pho­tog­ra­ph­er. “Some peo­ple believe that pho­tog­ra­phy is not a sig­nif­i­cant part of the strug­gle. How­ev­er, while now the most cru­cial thing is sit­ting in the trench­es, in the future, peo­ple will learn about this real­i­ty from pic­tures.”

One of his pho­tographs became world famous. He pho­tographed a house in Dnipro bombed by the Russ­ian army. The rock­et shat­tered the wall of a high-rise apart­ment build­ing, expos­ing the inte­ri­or of an apart­ment. The scene was unset­tling: orange kitchen cab­i­nets, apples on the table, and chairs, all sur­round­ed by the after­math of crim­i­nal gun­fire. Mikhail Kora­novsky, an hon­ored box­ing coach of Ukraine, lived in this apart­ment. He died, leav­ing a wife and two daugh­ters.

The next pho­to por­trait was tak­en by Ser­hii Nuzh­nenko from the Ukrain­ian chap­ter of RFE/RL. He stood on the infa­mous street in Bucha, where a col­umn of Russ­ian equip­ment had been destroyed. The Russ­ian army occu­pied the city a few days lat­er and com­mit­ted ter­ri­ble crimes.

“On Feb­ru­ary 27, I saw a video on Telegram show­ing a destroyed col­umn of Russ­ian equip­ment in Bucha,” said the pho­to­jour­nal­ist about his trip. “My col­leagues informed me of pos­si­ble routes to the town, and on March 1st, we went there. Every­one was con­fused, no one under­stood what was hap­pen­ing or what to expect. It was two days before the occu­pa­tion of the town. I won­der if the peo­ple I urged to evac­u­ate are still alive. They assured me every­thing would be okay.”

Чым не новы сімвал для гісторыі?

That could be a new his­tor­i­cal sym­bol, could­n’t it?

Efrem Lukatsky is a vet­er­an jour­nal­ist who has worked exten­sive­ly in hot spots well before the war in Ukraine. From the late 1980s, he head­ed the Asso­ci­at­ed Press’ local office pho­to ser­vice. He cap­tured the his­toric moment of bring­ing the nation­al flag to the Verk­hov­na Rada in 1991. Lat­er he worked as a war cor­re­spon­dent in Afghanistan, Iraq, Chech­nya, and Geor­gia. He now had to doc­u­ment such occur­rences in his home coun­try.

The pho­to tak­en after the lib­er­a­tion of Kher­son cap­tures the emo­tions of the city’s res­i­dents. They are seen smil­ing, kiss­ing, and cel­e­brat­ing the arrival of the long-await­ed lib­er­a­tors. That could be a new his­tor­i­cal sym­bol, could­n’t it?

Spous­es Kos­tiantyn and Vla­da Liberov took a series of impres­sive pho­tos from Kharkiv, Bakhmut, and Kher­son, signed Lik­bos. This is anoth­er indi­ca­tion of Russ­ian aggres­sion against Ukraini­ans. Before the war, the cou­ple was pro­fes­sion­al­ly engaged in pho­tograph­ing wed­dings. Now they cov­er the effects of the war. Their pic­tures are used on social media by Volodymyr Zelen­skyi, the Ukrain­ian Min­istry of Defense, and West­ern edi­to­ri­als. The mil­i­tary invit­ed the pho­tog­ra­phers to vis­it the dugouts and cap­ture their every­day lives. The Liberovs are still pho­tograph­ing wed­dings, but on spe­cial occa­sions only.

“If a mil­i­tary man sends us a text say­ing ‘I’m get­ting mar­ried, come,’ we drop every­thing and go at our own expense. These are the only wed­dings we shoot. We’ve giv­en up on civil­ians for now,” Kos­tiantyn and Vla­da explain. 

When going on anoth­er trip, they pre­pare for the pos­si­bil­i­ty that they will need to return, process the pho­tos, and share them with the world.

Dur­ing the open­ing of the exhi­bi­tion, Vik­tor Hamot­skyi, the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Embassy of Ukraine in Lithua­nia, stat­ed the fol­low­ing:

“I am grate­ful to those who came up with the idea for this exhib­it. In my opin­ion, it has three mis­sions. The first is to hon­or my coun­try, my peo­ple who are hero­ical­ly fight­ing for our com­mon free­dom. The sec­ond is to remind us that the war con­tin­ues. Third, to real­ize how impor­tant the role of pro­fes­sion­al and coura­geous jour­nal­ism is. Vic­to­ry over a com­mon ene­my will be a shared one!”

Waist deep in water and under fire

Work­ing in a war zone is a con­stant risk for jour­nal­ists. There is an opin­ion that the Russ­ian army is pur­pose­ful­ly hunt­ing media rep­re­sen­ta­tives. In 2023, two media work­ers (Bohdan Bitik and Arman Sol­din) died in Ukraine, accord­ing to Reporters With­out Bor­ders. How­ev­er, there could have been many more jour­nal­ist casu­al­ties.

A case in point: reporters from the Swedish chan­nel TV4 were in east­ern Ukraine to cov­er the counter-offen­sive. They were get­ting out of their car when it was hit by a kamikaze drone. Reporter Johan Fredriks­son and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Daniel Zdolsek were unhurt, but local jour­nal­ist Olek­san­dr Pavlov, who was accom­pa­ny­ing his col­leagues, was slight­ly injured. He was giv­en med­ical atten­tion. He also took pic­tures of the blown-up crossover.

How­ev­er, it is not only mines and mis­siles that pose a dan­ger to our col­leagues in Ukraine. It is no exag­ger­a­tion to say that after the destruc­tion of the Kakhov­ka Dam, jour­nal­ists had to work in water up to their waists. At that moment they were the eyes of the civ­i­lized world. It is no secret that open-source data often becomes evi­dence of crimes against human­i­ty.

Sergiy Tamilenko, head of the Nation­al Union of Jour­nal­ists of Ukraine (NUJU), deliv­ered a speech to con­clude the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny. He lives in Kyiv, and his words seem par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant:

“The thou­sands and thou­sands of peo­ple who will pass through the Vil­nius train sta­tion hall will be able to see the hor­rors of war and also reflect on the costs, risks, and dan­gers that jour­nal­ists in Ukraine face dai­ly. We are tired of war. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we can­not sim­ply turn off the ter­ri­ble news. Evil and aggres­sion await those who refuse to accept this unjust war. We can’t afford it…”

The exhi­bi­tion “Ukraine: Jour­nal­ists in the War Zone” opened on Feb­ru­ary 24 and will run for two weeks. Admis­sion is free of charge. The expo­si­tion is locat­ed on the right wing of Vil­nius Rail­way Sta­tion.

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists and the Lithuan­ian Union of Jour­nal­ists invite col­leagues and com­pa­tri­ots to vis­it the exhi­bi­tion.

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