Created by Kateryna Radchenko, Donald Weber and Christopher Nunn, the newspaper publication collates images taken by Ukrainian photographers and photojournalists on the ground
Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 sent shockwaves through Europe and the rest of the world. Even though Russia had already been waging a smaller war in Ukraine’s easternmost provinces since 2014, Western politicians had bought into the idea that this was caused by separatists (despite there being abundant evidence of Moscow having full control over them). Once Russia’s military began invading Ukraine from the north, east and south, the land of Ukraine, in effect, became a war zone. It also became apparent that Vladimir Putin has expressly ordered attacks against Ukrainian civilians. As millions of Ukrainians, most of them women and children, flee west – some 6.7million refugees have fled across the border into neighbouring European countries – apartment buildings, hospitals, cultural centres, and other civilian infrastructure were (and still are) attacked indiscriminately.
Over half a year later, the war rages on, yet it has faded from the front pages of the newspapers. Without the shocking photography emerging from Bucha, the site of a large-scale massacre of defenseless civilians, or from the bombing of a maternity ward in Mariupol, support for Ukraine would likely be less pronounced than it is. A new initiative created by Ukrainian photographer Kateryna Radchenko, British photographer Christopher Nunn, and Canadian photographer Donald Weber called The Information Front seeks to ensure that the Ukrainian cause prevails. Nunn and Weber have had a long history working in Ukraine. “The conversation that Chris and I were having centred on how we actually contribute in some way,” Weber tells me. “Given that we are pseudo citizens of the country and have a long [working] history there. For me, it was the notion of contribution from afar.”
