Life seemed to change in Ukraine overnight when the air raid sirens sounded in its capital, Kyiv, as Russian President Vladimir Putin sent Russian artillery and forces into Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky declared martial law, and thousands of Ukrainians prepared to evacuate with family, or stay and fight.
Since then, thousands of civilians and soldiers have died on Ukrainian soil, where once-beautiful city centers and towns were leveled by strikes. Months of fighting would eventually lead to the fall of the port city of Mariupol to Russian occupation in May.
As the one-year anniversary of the invasion arrives, Ukraine, Russia and Russian-backed separatists continue to fight for control over the Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia regions.
See the images that have defined a year of war.
1/40 Ukrainians attempt to evacuate the capital of Kyiv, Feb. 24, 2022. (Emilio Morenatti/AP)
2/40 A woman holds her baby inside a bus as they leave Kyiv, Ukraine, Feb. 24, 2022. (Emilio Morenatti/AP)
3/40 Hundreds of people take shelter inside a metro station as explosions are heard in downtown Kharkiv, Ukraine, Feb. 24, 2022. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
4/40 Stanislav says goodbye to his 2-year-old son, David, and wife, Anna, after they boarded a train for Lviv from Kyiv, Ukraine, March 3. 2022. Stanislav stayed to fight as his family sought refuge. (Emilio Morenatti/AP)
5/40 Marina Yatsko, left, and her boyfriend, Fedor, mourn over 18 month-old Kirill's body on a stretcher in a hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, March 4, 2022. Kirill was killed when Russian forces shelled the port city. Mariupol fell to Russian forces in May 2022, three months after Russian forces invaded Ukraine. (Evgeniy Maloletka/AP)
6/40 An elderly woman crosses the Irpin River on an improvised path under a bridge that was destroyed by Ukrainian troops, designed to slow any Russian military advance, while she and others fled the town of Irpin, Ukraine, March 5, 2022. (Vadim Ghirda/AP)
7/40 George Keburia says goodbye to his wife Maya and their children as they board a train for Lviv at the Odesa train station in Odesa, Ukraine, March 5, 2022. Hundreds of Ukrainian women and children evacuated Odesa before the violence of the war reached the city. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
8/40 Ukrainians cross an improvised path under a destroyed bridge while fleeing Irpin, in the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, March 8, 2022. (Felipe Dana/AP)
9/40 The Ukrainian Navy Band plays the national anthem near the historic Odesa National Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet in Odesa, Ukraine, March 8, 2022. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
10/40 Ukrainians, including Katya, center, receive weapons training in the event of a Russian attack, in Odesa, Ukraine, March 8, 2022. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
11/40 First responders evacuate Iryna Kalinina, 32, from a maternity hospital that was damaged by a Russian airstrike in Mariupol, Ukraine, March 9, 2022. Both Kalinina and her baby died at the hospital they were evacuated to, becoming two of the thousands of Ukrainian civilians who have died from the war. (Evgeniy Maloletka/AP)
12/40 A child in a stroller is lifted across an improvised path as people flee Irpin, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, March 9, 2022. (Felipe Dana/AP)
13/40 Anya, left, and Nastya, hold their newborns in a hospital basement being used as a bomb shelter during an air raid alarm at the Odesa Regional Children's Clinical Hospital in Odesa, Ukraine, March 17, 2022. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
14/40 Lena, center, recuperates from a broken arm next to her mother Elena, left, in the basement of a children's hospital that doubles as a bomb shelter at the Odesa Regional Children's Clinical Hospital, in Odesa, Ukraine, March 17, 2022. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
15/40 A man runs after recovering items from a burning shop following an attack by Russian forces in Kharkiv, Ukraine, March 25, 2022. (Felipe Dana/AP)
16/40 Ukrainian service members walk around a damaged Russian multiple rocket launcher on the outskirts of Bashtanka, Ukraine, March 27, 2022. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
17/40 The family of Ivan Lipskiy, a Ukrainian soldier, grieves at his casket in Odesa, Ukraine, March 29, 2022. Lipskiy was killed on March 18th during a Russian airstrike that hit the 36th Ukrainian Naval Infantry Brigade, killing more than 40 Ukrainian soldiers in the city of Mykolaiv. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
18/40 People walk through debris and destroyed Russian military vehicles, April 6, 2022, in Bucha, Ukraine. The Ukrainian government has accused Russian forces of committing a "deliberate massacre" as they occupied and eventually retreated from Bucha, northwest of Kyiv. Intercepted phone conversations between Russian soldiers revealed that the Kyiv commuter town had been a site of a "cleansing" operation – the torturing and execution of Ukrainians as a wartime tactic to suppress local civilians – repeated in occupied territories across Ukraine. (Chris McGrath/Getty Images)
19/40 Freshly dug graves are seen at a cemetery on April 18, 2022, Bucha, Ukraine. Mass graves were discovered in Bucha and Izium after Russian forces left the area, with hundreds of bodies – including civilians and children – discovered at the latter.(Alexey Furman/Getty Images)
20/40 Ukrainian soldiers carry the coffin of Volodymyr Losev, 38, during his funeral in Zorya Truda in Odesa, Ukraine, May 16, 2022. The 38-year-old Ukrainian volunteer soldier was killed on May 7 when the military vehicle he was driving ran over a mine in eastern Ukraine. (Francisco Seco/AP)
21/40 Ukrainian servicemen sit in a bus after they were evacuated from the besieged Mariupol's Azovstal steel plant, near a remand prison in Olyonivka, Ukraine, May 17, 2022. Mariupol fell to Russian forces that May, three months after Russia invaded Ukraine late February. (Alexei Alexandrov/AP)
22/40 Nila Zelinska holds her granddaughter's doll, found in her destroyed house, in Potashnya on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, May 31, 2022. Zelinska had just returned to her hometown after escaping war to find that she is homeless. (Natacha Pisarenko/AP)
23/40 Russian rockets launched against Ukraine from Russia's Belgorod region seen at dawn in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Aug. 15, 2022. (Vadim Belikov/AP)
24/40 Anastasia Ohrimenko, 26, cries next to the coffin of her husband, Yury Styglyuk, during his funeral in Bucha, Ukraine, Aug. 31, 2022. Styglyuk, a Ukrainian serviceman, died in combat on August 24th, in Maryinka, Donetsk. (Emilio Morenatti/AP)
25/40 Cadets practice with gas masks during a lesson in a bomb shelter on the first day of school at a cadet lyceum in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Sept. 1, 2022. The war had raged on between Russia and Ukraine for half a year at that point, with no end in sight. (Efrem Lukatsky/AP)
26/40 A woman warms her dog in her coat in Kivsharivka, Ukraine, Oct. 16, 2022. Residents in Kivsharivka had been living without gas, electricity or running water for around three weeks at that point. (Francisco Seco/AP)
27/40 Ukrainian family members reunite for the first time since Russian troops withdrew from the Kherson region in the village of Tsentralne, Ukraine, Nov. 13, 2022. (Bernat Armangue/AP)
28/40 Children look at a crater created by an explosion in a residential area after Russian shelling in Solonka, Lviv, Ukraine, Nov. 16, 2022. (Mykola Tys/AP)
29/40 Ukrainian soldiers fire artillery towards Russian positions near Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Nov. 20, 2022. (AP)
30/40 Ukrainian State Emergency Service firefighters respond to a fire at the aftermath of Russian shelling in Vyshgorod, Ukraine, Nov. 23, 2022. Authorities reported power outages in multiple cities of Ukraine, including parts of Kyiv, and in neighboring Moldova after renewed strikes struck infrastructure facilities in Ukraine. (Efrem Lukatsky/AP)
31/40 A Ukrainian serviceman pauses after coming back from the frontline near Kherson, Ukraine, Nov. 23, 2022. (Bernat Armangue/AP)
32/40 Police officers stand near collected fragments of Russian rockets that hit Kharkiv, Ukraine, Dec. 3, 2022. (AP)
33/40 Ukrainian soldiers fire at Russian positions near Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Dec. 16, 2022. (AP)
34/40 Vice President Kamala Harris and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi holds a Ukrainian flag presented by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, center, to U.S. lawmakers as he addresses a joint meeting of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, Dec. 21, 2022. The flag was autographed by front-line troops in Bakhmut, in Ukraine's contested Donetsk province. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
35/40 Anya Korostenska mourns at the grave of her fiancé, Oleksiy Zavadskyi, a Ukrainian serviceman, during his funeral in Bucha, Ukraine Jan. 19, 2023. Zayadskyi died in combat on January 15 in Bakhmut. (Daniel Cole/AP)
36/40 A woman evacuates with her child from a residential building, after it was hit by a Russian rocket at Kharkiv's city center, in Ukraine, Jan. 30, 2023. Russian shelling killed at least five people and wounded 13 others, as the Kremlin’s and Kyiv’s forces remained locked in combat in eastern Ukraine. (Andrii Marienko/AP)
37/40 Soldiers of the Ukrainian 3rd Army Assault Brigade of the Special Operations Forces (SSO) "Azov" rest in a blindage after a night of fighting near Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Feb. 11, 2023. (AP )
38/40 Nina Nikiforovа, 80, cries during the funeral of her son Volodymyr, a Ukrainian military serviceman who was killed during the war with Russia, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Feb. 11, 2023. (Emilio Morenatti/AP)
39/40 A Ukrainian soldier looks out of a self-propelled artillery vehicle on the frontline of combat in the Donetsk region, Ukraine, Feb. 18, 2023. (AP)
40/40 President Joe Biden walks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at St. Michael's Golden-Domed Cathedral, Feb. 20, 2023, in Kyiv. Biden made a surprise visit to Ukraine days before the country marked one year since its invasion by Russian forces. (Evan Vucci/AP)
