A woman crying in front of a destroyed apartment. Bodies thrown into a mass grave. A pregnant woman on a stretcher outside of a bombed maternity hospital; she will die soon after the photo is taken.
The images from the onset of the Russian invasion of Ukraine shocked the world last spring, showing the gruesome realities of the war and sending aid surging to Ukraine. More images came as the devastation spread to cities whose names the world learned quickly — Mariupol, Kharkiv, Kyiv and Bucha — as media coverage persisted to give the world a clear picture of the onslaught.
That work has won the photography staff of The Associated Press the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News coverage “for unique and urgent images from the first weeks of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including the devastation of Mariupol after other news organizations left, victims of Russian targeting of civilian infrastructure and the resilience of the Ukrainian people who were able to flee,” the Pulitzer Board’s citation reads.
Keep reading to see the images from the AP’s Pulitzer-winning entry, including images from AP photographers Felipe Dana, Evgeniy Maloletka, Emilio Morenatti, Vadim Ghirda, Rodrigo Abd, Nariman El-Mofty and Bernat Armangue.
Warning: these images contain graphic content.
Ukrainian emergency personnel and police officers evacuate injured pregnant woman Iryna Kalinina, 32, from a maternity hospital that was damaged by a Russian airstrike in Mariupol, Ukraine, March 9, 2022. “Kill me now!” she screamed, as they struggled to save her life at another hospital even closer to the frontline. The baby was born dead, and a half hour later, Iryna died too. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
FILE – Ukrainians crowd under a destroyed bridge as they try to flee crossing the Irpin river in the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, March 5, 2022. War has been a catastrophe for Ukraine and a crisis for the globe. One year on, thousands of civilians are dead, and countless buildings have been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of troops have been killed or wounded on each side. Beyond Ukraine’s borders, the invasion shattered European security, redrew nations’ relations with one another and frayed a tightly woven global economy. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti, File)
FILE – Natali Sevriukova reacts next to her house following a rocket attack the city of Kyiv, Ukraine, on Feb. 25, 2022. The yearlong war in Ukraine has left tens of thousands of dead and wounded on both sides, disrupted energy and food supplies, and reduced whole cities to ruins. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti, File)
An explosion erupts from an apartment building at 110 Mytropolytska St., after a Russian army tank was fired on it in Mariupol, Ukraine, Friday, March 11, 2022. On the seventh floor of the building, two elderly women Lydya and Nataliya were stuck in their apartment because they couldn’t bring it down to the shelter, and were killed in the explosion. The two heavily burned bodies were buried by neighbors in front of the building. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Medical workers unsuccessfully try to save the life of Marina Yatsko’s 18-month-old son Kirill, who was fatally wounded by shelling, at a hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, Friday, March 4, 2022. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – Lifeless bodies of men, some with their hands tied behind their backs lie on the ground in Bucha, Ukraine, Sunday, April 3, 2022. Associated Press journalists in Bucha, a small city northwest of Kyiv, saw the bodies of at least nine people in civilian clothes who appeared to have been killed at close range. At least two had their hands tied behind their backs. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)
FILE – Nadiya Trubchaninova, 70, cries while holding the coffin of her son Vadym, 48, who was killed by Russian soldiers last March 30 in Bucha, during his funeral in the cemetery of Mykulychi, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, April 16 , 2022. Trubchaninova hitched daily from her village to the shattered town of Bucha trying to bring her son’s body home for burial. On the northwestern fringes of the Ukrainian capital, Bucha had been occupied by Russian forces for about a month, taken as they swept toward Kyiv at the start of the invasion of Ukraine that began in late February 2022. When they withdrew, they left behind the scenes of horror. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd, File)
66-year-old Volodymyr, injured from a strike, sits on a chair in his damaged apartment, in Kramatorsk, Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine, Thursday, July 7, 2022. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)
FILE – A dog stands next to the body of an elderly woman killed inside a house in Bucha, Ukraine, Tuesday, April 5, 2022. Russians hunted people on lists prepared by their intelligence services and went door to door to identify potential threats. As their advance to Kyiv stalled and losses mounted, Russian troops continued to cleanse the streets of Bucha and surrounding towns with rising levels of sometimes drunken violence. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana, Files)
A woman walks amid destroyed Russian tanks in Bucha, in the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, April 2, 2022. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
A resident wounded after a Russian attack lies inside an ambulance before being taken to a hospital in Kherson, southern Ukraine, Thursday, Nov. 24, 2022. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
A man runs after recovering items from a burning shop following a Russian attack in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Friday, March 25, 2022. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
Anastasia Ohrimenko, 26, is comforted by relatives and friends as she mourns the loss of her husband, Yury Styglyuk, a Ukrainian serviceman who died in combat on August 24 in Maryinka, Donetsk, during his funeral in Bucha, Ukraine, on Aug. 31, 2022. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
Bodies are placed into a mass grave on the outskirts of Mariupol, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 9, 2022. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)