Iryna Kalinina (32), an injured pregnant woman, is carried from a maternity hospital that was damaged during a Russian airstrike in Mariupol, Ukraine. Her baby, named Miron (after the word for ‘peace’) was stillborn, and half an hour later Iryna died as well.
Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian cities have resulted in widespread suffering and death of at least 21,000 civilians, according to the UN Human Rights Office. When Russian forces invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022, they immediately targeted the strategically important port of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov. Russian shelling devastated the city, including numerous civilian targets, such as the maternity hospital photographed here.
At first, Russia labeled reports of the attack on the hospital, which resulted in three deaths and some 17 injuries, as fake news. Later, the Russian foreign affairs minister Sergey Lavrov said it had been deliberate, claiming the hospital had been taken over by paramilitaries, and that patients and staff had been evacuated. An investigation by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) concluded the hospital was deliberately targeted by Russia, in violation of international humanitarian law, and that those responsible had committed a war crime.
Ukrainian photographer Evgeniy Maloletka was one of the very few photographers documenting events in Mariupol at that time. He said: “We came to Mariupol just one hour before the invasion. For 20 days, we lived with paramedics in the basement of the hospital, and in shelters with ordinary citizens, trying to show the fear Ukrainians were living with.”
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