Haunting photos from Ukraine that earned AP a Pulitzer Prize

May 9, 2023 GMT
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Ukrainian emergency employees 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. The image was part of a series of images by Associated Press photographers that was awarded the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
1 of 15
Ukrainian emergency employees 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. The image was part of a series of images by Associated Press photographers that was awarded the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

The Associated Press was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography on Monday in recognition of 15 searing images that rendered in real-time the devastating human toll of the war in Ukraine. It was one of two prizes won by AP — the other was for public service journalism about the siege of Mariupol, Ukraine.

The winning package of breaking news photography included an image of emergency workers carrying a pregnant woman – who later died -- through the shattered grounds of a maternity hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol in the chaotic aftermath of a Russian attack.

Another showed Russia’s brutal monthlong occupation of Bucha in a chilling still-life -- a dog standing next to the body of an elderly woman who has been killed.

And another captured an elderly woman kneeling in agony next to the coffin of her son in the cemetery of Mykulychi, on the outskirts of Kyiv.

While AP photographers made countless images of horrifying, haunting and heartbreaking scenes of war, they also stood witness to courageous acts by soldiers and ordinary people.

Below is a photo gallery that showcases the Pulitzer-winning work of AP photographers Evgeniy Maloletka, Emilio Morenatti, Vadim Ghirda, Rodrigo Abd, Felipe Dana, Nariman El-Mofty, Bernat Armangue.