“Beware the Ides of March” Julius Caesar

Photographs and text y Jérôme Sessini

In 2014 until 2017, I worked in the Russian-speaking regions of Donbass, in Donetsk, Luhansk, Mariupol… Russia was clearly supporting the pro-Russian separatists, and the Russian media was showering Russian-speaking civilians with propaganda against the Ukrainian government and against the Western media, but still, the russian-speaking civilians were paying with their lives. I photographed civilians victims of Ukrainian army artillery. I was guided by this feeling of revolt and injustice that I know too well, each time common people are killed, injured, torn apart, by wars that are beyond them… 

Every time I was coming back to Kyiv from the Donbass war zone, my Ukrainian friends asked me questions tinged with reproaches:

-“Why are you going to photograph these crazy people? (Russian-speaking Ukrainians), they want to be Russians so they can go to Russia!!”
– “But because they are victims of a war, civilians die under the bombs of the Ukrainian army..”
– “It’s propaganda! It’s the pro-Russian militiamen themselves who are bombing the civilians!”
In short, any discussion became impossible, I had the strong impression that there were two Ukraines, deeply divided and irreconcilable.

UKRAINE. Yahotyn. April 6, 2022. Funeral of an Ukrainian soldier killed in combat.

UKRAINE. Borodyanka. April 9, 2022. Residential building destroyed by a Russian attack.

UKRAINE. Bucha. April 8, 2022. Local police exhume the bodies of 9 people for identification and war crime investigation. They were killed by Russian sniper fire, and they were buried by locals during the fighting and occupation by Russian forces of Bucha.

UKRAINE. Kharkiv. March 17, 2022. The Barabashova Kharkiv market, is the biggest market in Ukraine. It has gone up in flames after being shelled by the Russian artillery.

After 8 years of war, the Kremlin’s propaganda reaches its climax: “Our Russian-speaking Ukrainian brothers are victims of a genocide in the east of Ukraine, the country is a Nazi junta which exterminates the Russian-speakers.”

The unthinkable happens, Vladimir Putin’s army invades Ukraine, then follows murders, torture, rapes in Bucha, Borodyanka and in all the innumerable towns and villages which have the misfortune to find themselves in the way of the Russian tanks.

This conflict made me face an important examination of conscience. By testifying in 2014 to the condition of the Russian-speaking populations in eastern Ukraine, did I feed Russian propaganda?

UKRAINE. Irpin March 5, 2022. Ukrainian civilians from the town of Irpin, north of Kyiv, are crossing the bridge over the Irpin River. It was destroyed to impede a Russian advance, locals say. Then people gets to the capital’s train station in order to evacuate.

UKRAINE. Irpin. March 12, 2022. The bodies of two Russian soldiers killed during the fighting in Irpin, lie on the ground near the last Ukrainian position. Russian position are less than 1 kilometer away. Irpin (60 000 population) is the last lock for Russian forces to enter into Kyiv.

UKRAINE. Bucha. April 7, 2022. Road to Bucha.

UKRAINE. Kharkiv. March 17, 2022. Wounded civilians are seen in a hospital in Kharkiv. most of them were injured during the artillery fire and the bombardments of the Russian forces on the city of Kharkiv.

UKRAINE. Kharkiv. March 17, 2022. The Barabashova Kharkiv market, is the biggest market in Ukraine. It has gone up in flames after being shelled by the Russian artillery.

BIO

Jérôme Sessini is one the world’s most prolific and respected names working in the sensitive field of conflict zones and has been dispatched to war-torn countries like Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Libya for international publications. As well as reporting on the frontlines, he has covered social issues such as the drug-related violence on the streets of Mexico, the anti-government protests in Ukraine and indigenous minorities in Cambodia facing forced eviction. Through his work, he is constantly learning, adapting and evolving.

Since 2018, Sessini has been documenting the opioid crisis in the United States, where he has travelled to Ohio and Philadelphia to create intimate portraits of the people and places ravages by drug misuse. In 2017, Sessini travelled to remote villages in Cambodia with Samrith Vaing, documenting the life of indigenous minorities facing forced eviction. In 2016, Sessini documented the Kurdish Peshmerga offensive against Islamic State (IS) in the city of Bashiq before crossing the region to cover Iraqi forces pushing towards Mosul.

Website: https://www.magnumphotos.com/photographer/jerome-sessini/

Instagram: @jeromesessini/

Photo Essay edited by Managing Editor Alejandra Martínez Moreno.