A woman kisses the forehead of her 61-year-old brother, who lies in a coffin after being killed by Russian soldiers in a village whose name in English means “dream.” A cemetery worker walks amid rows and rows of black marble urns containing the cremated remains of countless people killed in Russia’s war on Ukraine. And a body covered by a white curtain or sheet lies on a city street, seemingly guarded by the cat and puppy who gaze out from advertisement photographs hung in a shop window.
On day 29 of the conflict — one month since it began — persistent signs of death lingered alongside numerous scenarios of people struggling to survive.
Images captured by Associated Press photographers show residents who have not fled Ukraine cleaning up rubble, going to the market, or queueing in line for help with daily necessities.
In one photograph, a man engulfed in clouds of dirty smoke holds a white cloth to his mouth with one hand as he picks through the debris of a house destroyed by fire with another in the besieged northeastern city of Kharkiv. In another, a lone man seen in silhouette walks up an empty street outside the capital of Kyiv, a shopping bag hanging from each hand, as smoke from a nearby warehouse destroyed by Russian forces fills the air and darkens the sky above him.
Many continue to leave their home cities, including 10-year-old girl Zlata Moiseinko. Dressed in a bright pink top and matching pink slippers, the child with the long blond braid receives a kiss on the top of her head from her grandmother in an AP photograph taken at a schoolhouse-turned field hospital in the western city of Mostyska. Zlata, who has a chronic heart condition, fled with her family from the community of Bila Tserkva south of Kyiv. She and her family are hoping to join friends in Germany.
Also hoping to make it to Germany or Poland is 16-year-old Julia of Dnipro. Julia traveled with her pet rabbit Baby to the western city of Lviv, where her mother awaited her.
Lviv, a city that has been relatively untouched by the war, has been a refuge for thousands of displaced Ukrainians. Residents there have embraced the newcomers, while continuing to hope for peace. One of them is retired policeman Volodymyr Ilnytskyi, seen in an AP photograph offering a prayer before ringing a cathedral bell.
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