Photo that the Russians said was fake is the photo of the year

• Coen Nij Bijvank

  news editor

Ukrainian photographer Evgeniy Maloletka has won the World Press Photo, the most prestigious photo prize. Maloletka was one of the last journalists from Western media in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol when he took the winning photo on March 9 last year.

The photo shows an injured pregnant woman, 32-year-old Iryna Kalinina. She is carried out of a hospital that had just been hit by a Russian air raid. Her baby is later stillborn. Shortly afterwards, mother Kalinina herself also dies from her injuries.

The jury calls the photo “confrontational”. “With this photo, Maloletka manages to capture the human suffering caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in one poignant image.”

The jury also praised Maloletka’s courage to work under immense pressure and threat. Mariupol, besieged by Russian troops, was a dangerous place when he took the photo. “You couldn’t predict when or where shots would be fired or a missile would land,” Maloletka says News hour. “We were close by when the hospital was hit, but it took us a while to assess the situation and know exactly where the attack had taken place.”

Almost all journalists had already left the city, but Maloletka continued his work. “I wanted to show the reality of the Russian attacks,” he says. “They didn’t attack strategic targets, just random locations. The Russians don’t care about casualties.”

A selection of the many other, often intense photos that Maloletka made in Mariupol last spring:

Initially, Russia dismissed the attack on the hospital, which left at least three people dead and seventeen injured, as fake news. “The Russian Foreign Ministry called me an information terrorist,” says Maloletka. “They tried to convince the public that my photos were staged and that the attack never happened.”

The Kremlin later came up with a different story: the hospital was deliberately attacked because it allegedly contained Ukrainian soldiers. Patients and staff had already been evacuated, the Russian government said. But Maloletka’s photos show something completely different.

“Russia uses this propaganda tactic more often,” says Maloletka. “For example, in Georgia, which is partly occupied by Russian troops, and in Syria, where Russia intervened by bombing hospitals, among other things.”

I am especially happy that a Ukrainian photographer won.

That Russia disputes the authenticity of Maloletka’s photographs underlines the importance the Kremlin attaches to the public’s perception of the war. But Ukraine also recognizes the effects of photos, Maloletka notes. “We received a letter from the mayor of Mariupol thanking us. Thanks to the work of journalists on the ground, there was enough international pressure on Russia to allow a humanitarian corridor out of the besieged city.”

Is Maloletka proud of his work and his price? “I am especially happy that a Ukrainian photographer won. Attention to the war has waned now that the front line has barely moved. I use this prize, this platform, to show that the war rages on.”

Maloletka is not the only prize winner. In the category ‘Best photo story’, for example, the Danish photographer Mads Nissen won the first prize twice.

Last year, Nissen took a series of photos about Afghanistan, where the population is suffering under the Taliban regime after the departure of the Americans. The crisis worsened due to drought and the loss of international support.

This photo shows 15-year-old Khalil Ahmad, whose family decided to sell his kidney due to lack of money:

Last year, Canadian photographer Amber Bracken won the World Press Photo for her fairytale image of children’s clothing on crosses. The crosses are memorials to the Indigenous children who died in a Catholic Canadian boarding school in the 19th and 20th centuries. In 2021, a mass grave with more than 200 children was discovered near the boarding school.

All winning photos of this year can be seen from 22 April to the end of July in the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam.