Irina Kalinina, feeling her rounded lower abdomen while being evacuated and injured from the destroyed maternity hospital in Mariupol, is pale and struggling. The photo, which highlights the “killing of future generations of Ukrainians,” won top prize for global press photo on Thursday. Miron, whose name is derived from the word for “peace,” was stillborn after the Russian airstrike nearly two weeks after the invasion of Ukraine. Half an hour later, his mother, who was barely 32 years old, passed away.
His photograph, by Evgeny Maloletka of the Associated Press (AP), “captures the absurdity and horror of war” and “shines light on the murder of future generations of Ukrainians,” said the jury of Ukraine’s most prestigious competition.
This Ukrainian, who said he arrived an hour before the invasion of Mariupol, was one of the few photographers who documented the events there at the time. “We lived for 20 days with paramedics in the hospital basement and in shelters with ordinary citizens, trying to show the fear that Ukrainians live,” he said.
