Photographer Page

Diego Ibarra Sánchez

A nurse prays inside the corridors of the Intensive Care Unit of Rafik Hariri University Hospital on January 15, 2021, in southern Beirut, Lebanon. While the pandemic continues to devastate communities around the world, vaccination campaigns and surevelliance of the virus could eventually make COVID-19 more akin to the common cold.

A young Ukrainian boy lies on the ground pretending to have been killed by “enemy fire” during military training at RANGER camp. More than 10,000 people have been killed since the Ukraine war began, but people on both sides are already training the next generation to fight.

A volunteer instructor guides the youngest group of LIDER, a summer camp for children aged six to seventeen, to their daily activities which include strict discipline and familiarisation with the use of weapons.

A group of young Ukrainian boys are being taught how to put a gas mask on by Oleksiv Zabolotny, one of the instructors at LIDER.

Mathew, 11, crawls under barbed wire during military exercises at LIDER camp. “I decided to join LIDER camp because we have to learn how to defend your country,” he says.

Ukrainian children take part in a military war simulation exercise at RANGER camp. The patriotic military training program located in Volodymyr-Volynskiy close to the Polish border and designed by Ruslan Bormovoy, targets youth between the ages of twelve and seventeen.

A young cadet salutes his superior at the G.T. Beregovoj Military Lyceum in Donetsk. Since the war in the Donbass started in 2014, more than 300 graduates have received diplomas from the Donetsk People’s Republic, the state backed program established on Ukrainian soil and backed by Russia.

Nikita, 12, inside a school shelled in 2014 and since abandoned in Nikishino, in the Donetsk People’s Republic. “I was truly scared at the beginning but I get used with time,” he admits. “I always come here to play among the rubles. Sometimes, I feel alone. Almost all my friends have left Nikishino.”

Mykhailo Deinikov, 8, a camper at LIDER camp writes: “I like the schedule, military discipline, military exercises and morning exercises. I believe it’s important to defend the homeland because it can be captured by the enemy very easily and we can be taken hostage and killed. I want to become a fish researcher. I do not want to become a soldier because it’s scary. I dream that there will be no more wars in the world.”