Award of Excellence: Fabio Bucciarelli
This premier category is open to all photographers — independent, agency, wire service, or newspaper photographers.
The work should be of primary interest to a nation or the world, usually created with the intent to share nationally or internationally. Newspaper photographers who cover national or international stories should enter portfolios in this category.
The Russian Invasion: The Siege of Kyiv
On February 24, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, marking a violent escalation of the countries’ eight-year-old conflict and causing Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II. Kyiv becomes Putin’s primary target: if the Russians will seize the capital and deposed the government, the defense of the country would quickly unravel. Putin’s idea of a blitzkrieg and to introduce a new pro-Russian government was wrecked thanks to the strong Ukrainian Resistance, armed by Western powers that openly criticized the invasion. In the first days of the invasion, tens of thousands of people left the city and after the first month of conflict, more than ten million people flew their homes. In March, Kyiv and its suburbs were under constant bombardment from the Russian army: sirens, announcing the bombing sounded several times a day, and missiles and artillery strike the neighborhoods, destroying residential buildings and leaving death and destruction. Main clashes were concentrated in Irpin, the northern suburb of Kyiv, where the indiscriminate Russian bombing of apartment blocks push hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee the city. According to UNHCR nearly 8 million refugees fleeing Ukraine have been recorded across Europe, while an estimated 8 million people had been displaced within the country since the beginning of the Russian invasion.
The Russian Invasion: Battle of Kharkiv
Kharkiv, the second-most-populous city in Ukraine and the gateway to the country’s east, located less than 40 kilometers from the Russian border, was under continuous attack for nearly three months. At the end of February, Russian forces tried to besiege the city using a ground invasion force supported by massive artillery strikes, killing hundreds of civilians and causing wholesale destruction. This attempt to take over the city failed, but parts of Kharkiv remained under heavy bombardment for months. According Amnesty International, Amnesty who found evidence of widespread use of widely-banned cluster munitions by Russia, 606 civilians had been killed and 1,248 injured in the region between 24 February and 28 April. Ukrainian forces retaliated with ferocity blocking the Russian advance on the city in the surrounding villages, which became theaters of violent battles. In May, two months later since the occupation began, Ukrainians launched a major counteroffensive to retake village after village and liberate thousands of civilians who had been trapped under Russian occupation. Despite the liberation of the villages and the return of villages and civilians who find their homes ripped apart, The Russian army continues to shell various Kharkiv suburbs, as well as the city, killing numerous civilians and wounding dozens more.
The Rising Cost of the Climate Crisis in Flooded South Sudan
South Sudan became an independent state in 2011 with a referendum in which more than 98% of voters voted for secession from the north of the country. The youngest state in the world was born in the ashes of forty years of civil war and on its knees from major famines that caused more than two million deaths. Less than two years later, following a political struggle, violence erupted between the two largest ethnic groups bringing South Sudan into a bloody civil war. The climate crisis is bringing this already highly vulnerable country ever closer to collapse. Since 2019, South Sudan has suffered from unprecedented floods which have submerged large swathes of the country, and entire villages and displaced hundreds of thousands of people. Multi-year inundations like this haven’t happened in South Sudan in more than six decades. Now, the water is no longer draining away leaving more than 8 million people at risk of starvation. Mayendit is one of those villages which became an island surrounded by flood waters. The floods have caused extensive infrastructural damage to roads, bridges, schools, sanitation, and hygiene facilities limiting access to health and education infrastructures, and disrupting markets and livelihoods. Less than 3 years ago Mayendit could be reached by land; today 8 hours of canoeing are needed to reach the mainland. Two-thirds of the population has fled to more dry ground, becoming IDPs, while the host the community remained is struggling to survive.