More than five weeks have now passed since Russia commenced its brutal invasion of neighbouring Ukraine, with no end to the bloody conflict in sight as peace talks between negotiators make little apparent headway.
Russian president Vladimir Putin told his citizens at the outset on 24 February that their country was not waging war but instead conducting “a special military operation” intended to “de-Nazify and de-militarise” the Ukrainian government and liberate its people from tyranny and genocide, a rationale with little grounding in reality given that its target was a sovereign democracy whose president is Jewish and a genial former TV actor.
What has ensued instead has been a horrific assault on Ukrainian cities like Mariupol and Kharkiv, surrounded and shelled into oblivion by Russian artillery as the Ukrainian armed forces and local residents stage a courageous resistance that has won the admiration of the entire world.
Russia has already been accused of carrying out war crimes as a conquest the Kremlin appeared to believe would be a formality has proven to be anything but. The latest horrific reports emerging from Bucha are stoking further outrage and prompting renewed calls for Mr Putin to be held to account for his solders’ actions.
Every day the war continues, press photographers risk their lives to document the realities on the ground, recording with an unflinching eye the destruction of entire districts and the devastation being done to the lives of ordinary people caught up in appalling violence through no fault of their own and deprived of basic amenities as they battle for survival.
Here are a selection of some of the latest shocking images to emerge from Ukraine, underlining the human cost of a senseless war.
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