After spending more than a month in Ukraine documenting the war earlier this year, Marcus Yam is back in the eastern part of the country where fighting remains fierce and residents continue to endure with no end in sight.
While taking time off from covering the conflict, Yam won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography for his “raw and urgent images of the U.S. departure from Afghanistan that capture the human cost of the historic change in the country.”
He’s now back in Ukraine to document the conflict and its human toll.
Day 111: The fire crackles beyond the curtain.
White body bags liter a mass grave.
Fragments from munitions laid out across a white veil.
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Behind it, a pummeled home. A gentle reminder of a vicious cycle.
A woman looks on after a home is destroyed by a bombardment that hit a neighborhood in Dobropillya, Ukraine.
(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
Fragments of a munition is collected after a bombardment destroyed buildings in a neighborhood in Dobropillya, Ukraine.
(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
Day 110: The road to Lysychansk is under attack.
A woman emerges. Her hair and hands covered in dust. Smoke rises from the rubble. She weeps.
A dark sky looms over an obliterated police station. Nowhere is safe.
The battle ahead, beyond the broken glass.
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An armored military vehicle after it was destroyed by bombardment near its defensive position, in Lysychansk, Ukraine.
(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
Local residents gather their belongings after a bombardment hit their homes along a road heading into Lysychansk, Ukraine.
(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
A piece of a rocket lands into the ground in Lysychansk, Ukraine.
(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
Day 109: Civilians evacuate from Lysychansk.
Volunteers risk their lives to bring many out. A woman clasps her hands together.
Sun scorches the road. Expressions carry more than the weight of exhaustion.
A child sits on the floor, a front row view.
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A young boy sits to rest as local residents of Lysychansk endure the heat and the bumpy journey during an evacuation run by volunteers in an armored vehicle towards safer areas like Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, as seen here at a resting point, in Siversk, Ukraine.
(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
A military rocket launcher drives on a highway towards Lysychansk, Ukraine.
(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
Residents of Lysychansk rests as they endure the heat and the bumpy journey during an evacuation towards safer areas like Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, Ukraine.
(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
Day 108: Lysychansk, Ukraine
A tireless duel of bombardment destroying Lysychansk. Residents await help, scour for food & water.
Journalists run for cover. Rockets hit, engulfing with smoke & dust.
The city is withering.
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Soldiers and journalists flee for cover after a bombardment hit nearby, sending dust in the air, in Lysychansk, Ukraine.
(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
Residents in a residential compound wait for supplies to be given out by police officers who help deliver aid to residents who have remained behind despite the war, in Lysychansk, Ukraine.
(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
Residents take advantage of a quiet morning to move around to collect water before anticipated bombardment begins in Lysychansk, Ukraine.
(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
“We’re praying to God this ends. It’s so scary. We never thought this war would happen,” Antonyna Samsonyuk said in tears
Antonyna Samsonyuk and Sergiy Samsonyuk live in a ground floor bar because they did not want to remain in their 8th floor apartment, which is too dangerous, in Lysychansk, Ukraine.
(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
Day 106: Lysychansk, Ukraine
Dogs of war.
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These puppies did not flinch at the sound of artillery. They made no noise. Mother is nowhere to found.
They sat quietly, unaware of their surroundings. They huddled together under an old trailer to play.
A Ukrainian soldier runs outside from a makeshift military base in Lysychansk, Ukraine.
(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
Rockets overhead. We went inside a building. Leaned into a dark room.
I inadvertently set off a booby trap. A fuse is lit. A moment of reckoning. A buddy next to me takes a knee.
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A loud explosion. Alive. It was only a stun grenade. Fortunately. Learned a valuable lesson.
Supply crates sit in a depot at a makeshift military outpost in Lysychansk, Ukraine.
(Marcus Yam/Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
Residents sell their wares at a day time street market in Lysychansk, Ukraine.
(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
Day 102: The path to Lysychansk.
People under the belly of a water truck. They have lived without water or electricity.
Liubov shrugs as she chops wood to cook. She invites help.
In Siversk, Ukraine, residents who’ve been without electricity and running water for a month fill bottles from a spout under a water delivery truck.
(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
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Liubov Vedeneeva, chops firewood in Lysychansk, Ukraine. “Time flies fast when you are having fun,” she shrugs.
(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
Armed men smoke cigarettes near the town center of Siversk, Ukraine.
(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
A school burns in Lysychansk. Fighter jets roar above, then ‘boom.’
Machine gun fire rattles down the road. The voices of men screaming instructions echo.
A woman sobs. ‘I cannot live like this anymore. Nobody knows when this is going to end.’
A school is destroyed by bombardment in Lysychansk, Ukraine.
(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
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Day 101: Kilometers from the Russians, soldiers stay alert.
Locals surface for fresh air. One-hundred days of fear.
More dark days to come.
Natalia Tishenko comforts her son Yaroslav, 7, in the bomb shelter their family has called home for more than two months near Velyka Novosilka, Ukraine.
(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
Valentyna Lazarevna, 80, kisses her granddaughter Nina Novokhatskaya, 20, while they and others enjoy some fresh air after emerging from their bomb shelter near Velyka Novosilka, Ukraine. “I want to go home, but it’s broken. I’m afraid. The shelling is almost every day,” said Lazarevna.
(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
Nadia Schamal, cooking in an underground shelter near Velyka Novosilka, Ukraine, says she uses her candles as sparingly as possible to preserve them.
(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
Day 99: The cadence of war.
Russia is laying down a barrage. Civilians ask, ‘When will this end?’
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A man waits to leave on an evacuation train from Pokrovsk, Ukraine.
(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
A charred component of a rocket lies in the field outside Soledar, Ukraine.
(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
Day 98: Slovyansk has a front row seat to Russian invasion.
Vitaliy’s wife was killed in an attack. He grieves. Next door, a room splashed red.
A night gone wrong.
The splintered windshield of one car frames the view of a burned-out shell of another in Slovyansk, Ukraine
(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
Vitaliy Kryvorotenko shows pictures of himself and his wife, Nelia Kolisnichenko in an album, pausing from photo to photo: “Here she is, here she is, Here she is.” Nelia was struck and killed by shrapnel as she rested beside a window when the bombardment began.
(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
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Local residents clear out debris after a bombardment destroyed a house in the outskirts of Slovyansk, Ukraine.
Marcus Yam is a foreign correspondent and photographer for the Los Angeles Times. Since joining in 2014, he has covered a wide range of topics including humanitarian issues, social justice, terrorism, foreign conflicts, natural disasters, politics and celebrity portraiture. He won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography in 2022 for images documenting the U.S. departure from Afghanistan that capture the human cost of the historic change in the country. Yam is a two-time recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Journalism Award, notably in 2019, for his unflinching body of work showing the everyday plight of Gazans during deadly clashes in the Gaza Strip. He has been part of two Pulitzer Prize-winning breaking news teams.
