Enduring Mayhem: Images From Year 3 of the War in Ukraine

With the largest and deadliest war in Europe since the end of World War II now in its third year, the scale of the devastation wrought by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine continues to mount.

The front line is a place of ghastly violence where hundreds of thousands of Russian and Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or wounded, according to conservative Western estimates. The list of Ukrainian cities and towns largely leveled to the ground by Russian bombs and artillery grows with each passing month.

Russian forces have moved forward in small increments, sustaining a staggering number of casualties to take cities like Avdiivka, which Moscow captured in February. They are now closing in on the nearby city of Pokrovsk, a Ukrainian stronghold in the east.

In recent months, the fighting has spread to the Russian-Ukrainian border area. In early May, Russian forces launched an offensive in Ukraine’s northeast, seizing several settlements in a push near the city of Kharkiv. In August, the Ukrainian Army crossed into Russia’s western Kursk region in a surprise assault that brought the war into the Russian territory in a way never before seen, forcing tens of thousands of civilians to evacuate.

Away from the front, millions of Ukrainians have spent hours in bomb shelters as Russia rains down missiles and drones on military units and civilians across the nation. Ukraine’s energy grid, severely damaged, is working but sporadically. Thousands of schools, hospitals and cultural institutions have been damaged or destroyed. Millions have lost their homes.

For all that time, photographers with The New York Times and other news organizations have chronicled the war, capturing a slice of how soldiers and civilians have experienced it. Some images, our photographers say, will never leave them.