Intimate accounts of limbs lost, lives devastated in Ukraine
Natasha Stepanenko, 43, sits on her bed with daughter Yana, 11, at a public hospital in Lviv, Ukraine, May 15, 2022. On April 8, a missile struck the train station in the eastern city of Kramatorsk where Natasha, Yana and her twin brother Yarik were planning to catch an evacuation train heading west and, they hoped, to safety. Yana lost two legs, one just above the ankle, the other higher up her shin. Natasha lost her left leg below the knee. (AP Photo / Emilio Morenatti)
By Emilio Morenatti and Elena Becatoros
Madrid-based Chief Photographer Emilio Morenatti and Athens Bureau Chief Elena Becatoros tell the arresting stories of Ukrainians who have lost limbs to Russian attacks.
The stories of people who undergo amputations during conflict are as varied as their wounds; the duo worked through local contacts and searched hospitals for the right subjects to convey the experiences of individuals who had their lives suddenly and violently upended. Morenatti’s intimate images and Becatoros’ evocative text convey the brutal consequences of war for men, women and children suffering permanent loss and facing long journeys of recovery and reconciliation.
A doctor carries Yana Stepanenko, 11, at a public hospital in Lviv, Ukraine, May 13, 2022. Yana and her mother Natasha were injured April 8 during shelling at the train station in the eastern city of Kramatorsk, where they traveled from their village near the front line. With Yana’s twin brother Yarik, they had been planning to catch an evacuation train heading west. – AP Photo / Emilio Morenatti
Yana Stepanenko, 11, sits in her wheelchair at a public hospital in Lviv, Ukraine, May 13, 2022. – AP Photo / Emilio Morenatti
Yana Stepanenko, 11, is assisted by her twin brother Yarik at a public hospital in Lviv, Ukraine, May 12, 2022. Yarik was uninjured in the April 8 missile strike on the train station in the eastern city of Kramatorsk where Yana and their mother Natasha suffered injuries requiring amputation. – AP Photo / Emilio Morenatti
Yana Stepanenko, 11, has her wounds cleaned by doctors at a public hospital in Lviv, Ukraine, May 13, 2022. – AP Photo / Emilio Morenatti
Followed by their mother Natasha, Yarik Stepanenko, 11, pushes the wheelchair of his twin sister Yana along a corridor of a public hospital in Lviv, Ukraine, May 12, 2022. – AP Photo / Emilio Morenatti
Yarik Stepanenko, 11, pushes his twin sister Yana on a swing outside a public hospital in Lviv, Ukraine, May 12, 2022. – AP Photo / Emilio Morenatti
Anton Gladun, 22, eats at his bed in the Third City Hospital, Cherkasy, Ukraine, May 6, 2022. Anton, a military medic deployed on the front lines in eastern Ukraine, lost both legs and his left arm when a mine exploded on March 27. – AP Photo / Emilio Morenatti
Anton Gladun lies on his bed at the Third City Hospital, in Cherkasy, Ukraine, May 5, 2022. – AP Photo / Emilio Morenatti
Anton Gladun, a military medic who lost both legs and his left arm while deployed in eastern Ukraine, has his wounds cleaned by doctors at the Third City Hospital, in Cherkasy, Ukraine, May 6, 2022. – AP Photo / Emilio Morenatti
Anton Gladun has his wounds checked by a doctor at the Third City Hospital, in Cherkasy, Ukraine, May 6, 2022. – AP Photo / Emilio Morenatti
Lidiya Gladun lifts the bedsheet to check the bandages on her son’s severed legs at the Third City Hospital, in Cherkasy, Ukraine, Friday, May 6, 2022. Anton Gladun, 22, a military medic deployed on the front lines in eastern Ukraine, lost both legs and his left arm when a mine exploded on March 27. – AP Photo / Emilio Morenatti
Anton Gladun lies on his bed at the Third City Hospital, in Cherkasy, Ukraine, May 5, 2022. – AP Photo / Emilio Morenatti
Nastia Kuzik, 21, talks with her parents while waiting for the arrival of the medical team that will transport her to Germany, at a public hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, May 5, 2022. On the morning on March 17, she was caught in a bombing after visiting her brother in Chernihiv, losing her right leg below the knee and seriously injuring her left leg. She has since arrived in Germany for further treatment. – AP Photo / Emilio Morenatti
Nastia Kuzik grimaces during a rehabilitation session at a public hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine, May 4, 2022. She lost her right leg below the knee and seriously injured her left leg in a March 17 bombing. – AP Photo / Emilio Morenatti
Nastia Kuzik reacts to pain during a rehabilitation session at a public hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine, May 4, 2022. – Nastia Kuzik, 21, reacts to pain during a rehabilitation session at a public hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine, May 4, 2022.
Nastia Kuzik is carried in an elevator at a public hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine, May 5, 2022, as a medical team transfers her to Germany for further treatment. – AP Photo / Emilio Morenatti
Nastia Kuzik says goodbye to her father inside an ambulance at a public hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine, May 5, 2022, as she is transferred to Germany for further treatment of her wounds. – AP Photo / Emilio Morenatti
A doctor cleans the wounds of Oksana Balandina, 23, at a public hospital in Lviv, Ukraine, May 14, 2022. Balandina lost both legs and four fingers on her left hand when a shell sticking in the ground near her house exploded on March 27. “There was explosion. Just after that I felt my legs like falling into emptiness. I was trying to look around and saw that there were no legs anymore — only bones, flesh and blood.” – AP Photo / Emilio Morenatti
Oksana Balandina is carried by her husband Viktor at a public hospital in Lviv, Ukraine, May 13, 2022. Balandina lost both legs and four fingers on her left hand when a shell sticking in the ground near her house exploded on March 27. – AP Photo / Emilio Morenatti
Oksana Balandina has her hair combed by her husband Viktor at a public hospital in Lviv, Ukraine, Friday, May 13, 2022. – AP Photo / Emilio Morenatti
Olena Viter, 45, undergoes surgery at a public hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine, May 10, 2022. Viter lost both her leg and her 14-year-old son Ivan when bombs rained down on Rozvazhiv, heir village in the Kyiv region, on March 14. Four people died, including Ivan, and about 20 were wounded. – AP Photo / Emilio Morenatti
Olena Viter waits outside the operating theatre before undergoing surgery at a public hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine, May 10, 2022. She lost both her leg and her 14-year-old son Ivan when bombs rained down on their village Rozvazhiv, in the Kyiv region, on March 14. – AP Photo / Emilio Morenatti
Olena Viter is transferred to a stretcher before being taken to the operating room for further surgery at a public hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine, May 10, 2022. The explosion that took Viter’s left leg also took her son, 14-year-old Ivan, a budding musician already playing in a small orchestra. Her husband Volodymyr buried him and another boy killed in the same blast under a rose bush in their garden. – AP Photo / Emilio Morenatti
Olena Viter paints on her bed as she recovers from her wounds at a public hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine, May 10, 2022. – AP Photo / Emilio Morenatti
Sasha Horokhivskyi uses crutches to walk beside the bed of Ukrainian Territorial Defense member Andreii Vecheslavovich in a public hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine, April 28, 2022. – AP Photo / Emilio Morenatti
To mitigate phantom pains, Sasha Horokhivskyi, 38, receives mirror therapy at a public hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine, April 28, 2022. Horokhivskyi lost his leg above the knee on March 22 after being shot in the calf by a territorial defense member who mistook him for a spy after Horokhivskyi stopped to take photos of bombed buildings near his home. – AP Photo / Emilio Morenatti
Sasha Horokhivskyi rests on the balcony of his room in a public hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine, May 4, 2022. – AP Photo / Emilio Morenatti
Reflected in a mirror, Sasha Horokhivskyi reacts to pain as doctors at a public hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine, dress the wound of his amputated left leg, April 28, 2022. – AP Photo / Emilio Morenatti
Sasha Horokhivskyi exercises on stairs at a public hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine, May 4, 2022. Horokhivskyi lost his leg above the knee after being shot in the calf by a territorial defense member who mistook him for a spy after Horokhivskyi stopped to take photos of bombed buildings near his home. – AP Photo / Emilio Morenatti
Morenatti, who lost his left leg in 2009 while on assignment covering the conflict in Afghanistan, describes his approach to the coverage:
“When a part of your body is amputated, you cross over into the disabled community, and a camaraderie inevitably develops,” Morenatti says. “My need to access this group is above any kind of impediment: I’m fascinated by comparing experiences, amputee to amputee. This is why I’m no longer interested in covering the war from the front line, but rather from behind the front lines, where those who have lost their legs and arms are left behind, to document the accumulated painful experiences that remain beyond any human logic and where the only thing that remains is the raw testimony of the cruelty marked by this damned war.”
The AP pair’s package,focusing on six victims of the war,was widely used, and Morenatti discussed the work at length in a first-person piece for The Telegraph in Britain.
