Illuminations Ukrainian photographer Mykhaylo Palinchak documents the devastation that remains after Russia’s retreat from occupied parts of Ukraine
A year ago, the Ukrainian army succeeded in liberating most of Ukraine’s Kharkiv region from Russian occupation, and by November they had also recaptured the southern city of Kherson. The retreating Russian military left behind a mass of evidence testifying to the crimes it had committed in the occupied region. Civilian buildings reduced to rubble, torture chambers, and mass graves throughout the once-thriving area appear to be haunted by the suffering that took place there. Ukrainian photographer Mykhaylo Palinchak traveled to Kherson and other parts of Ukraine that survived the occupation, chronicling what he saw in the wake of the invading army’s retreat. The title of this photographic series is “Illuminate”: by pointing a flash into the void left behind by the occupying army, the photographer bears witness to what took place there before.
The ruins of an apartment building in the Saltivka district of Kharkiv.
Human remains inside a burned civilian car. Close to 300 people died this way on the Zhytomyr–Kyiv highway near Bucha while trying to get away from the invasion. Their bodies were discovered after the Russian army retreated from the Kyiv region.
An apartment in Izium, Kharkiv region, reduced to rubble after a Russian missile strike on March 9, 2022.
A school basement in the village of Yahidne, Chernihiv region, where more than 300 residents spent 28 days without electricity, heat, or fresh air. To the left of the door are the names of people who had been killed by the Russian military; to the right, the names of those who died in the basement. The last entry in the log of their confinement reads: “31 — our troops have come.”
The same basement in Yahidne, located 140 kilometers (or about 90 miles) north of Kyiv, not far from the Belarusian border. Yahidne was occupied by the Russian troops in March 2022, during their attempt to capture Kyiv. Among the people confined in the basement were infants and people over the age of 90. According to Ukraine’s then-Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova, 10 people died in the basement, and 17 more Yahidne residents were killed by the occupying army. Later, Ukraine charged nine servicemen of the Russian 55th detached motorized rifle brigade with war crimes.
On March 31, 2022, the Russian military withdrew from the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, taking with them 169 members of the Ukrainian National Guard, who are likely still imprisoned in Russia. NPP staff says that, before they left, the Russian troops looted the power plant, taking everything they considered valuable: tea-kettles, coffee-makers, computers, and even 200 camp beds.
Kherson Museum of Fine Arts once had one of the richest art collections in Ukraine. At least 10,000 out of its 14,000 works of art were looted by the occupying military when it retreated from Kherson. Between October 31 and November 3, 2022, artwork and museum equipment were wrapped in rags and loaded onto trucks to be taken to the Russian-annexed Crimea.
A portrait of Lenin was nevertheless left behind.
A corridor in a Kherson building where the Russian troops confined and tortured local Ukrainians. According to witnesses, more than 300 people experienced illegal imprisonment and torture. Some of them spent days in confinement, while others were kept for months or transported to Russia as prisoners.
A torture chamber in Kherson.
A mass burial site in the woods outside of Izium, Kharkiv region. In September 2022, 447 bodies were discovered here.
Out of the people buried here, 414 were civilians: 215 men, 194 women, and five children. Twenty-two were members of the Ukrainian military. The sex of eleven bodies could not be determined.
Thirty of the bodies bear marks of torture and execution: rope marks on the neck, bound hands, broken limbs, and amputated sex organs. All the bodies have been exhumed for post-mortem examination and reinterment.