The war in Ukraine, which dominated the news in 2022, also dominated this year’s Pulitzer Prizes, with three awards, including Public Service, going to journalists from the war zone.

Searing images of civilian war casualties, innovative technology used to document war crimes and brave journalists risking their lives to reveal key battles were all recognized on Monday.

The Associated Press won two Pulitzers for Ukraine coverage. Its team of Mstyslav Chernov, Evgeniy Maloletka, Vasilisa Stepanenko and Lori Hinnant won the Public Service Gold Medal for their reporting from inside the besieged city of Mariupol during the early days of the war — risking their lives and providing the only reporting from the city after other journalists left. The photography staff of the AP won the Breaking News Photography Pulitzer for images from Mariupol and other photos from the first weeks of the war that highlighted the devastating civilian losses from Russia’s invasion.

The New York Times won the prize for International Reporting with an entry that included a visual investigation that tied a massacre in the Ukrainian city of Bucha to a Russian military unit, despite the country’s denials.

“AP journalists have done courageous and important work in Ukraine throughout the war, shining a spotlight in particular on the human toll of the conflict,” said AP senior vice president and executive editor Julie Pace said in the AP’s story. “From dispelling Russian misinformation to contributing to the creation of a humanitarian corridor, their work has been an incredible public service, and we’re so pleased that it has been honored by the Pulitzer board.”

The AP’s photo entry included one of the most-remembered images from the war so far — an injured, pregnant 32-year-old Iryna Kalinina, who later died, being carried on a stretcher amid bombed-out wreckage. Almost all of the images show in difficult and graphic ways the toll of the war on civilians, from a dog standing near a dead woman lying under a table in her house to a bomb hitting a residential apartment building.

Mstyslav Chernov, a Ukrainian video journalist for The Associated Press and part of the team who won the Public Service Pulitzer, wrote a first-person account of the journalists’ escape from Mariupol, where they stayed for weeks after other journalists had left. In it, he wrote of the importance of bearing witness to what was really happening.

“The absence of information in a blockade accomplishes two goals. Chaos is the first. People don’t know what’s going on, and they panic. At first I couldn’t understand why Mariupol fell apart so quickly. Now I know it was because of the lack of communication,” he wrote.

“Impunity is the second goal. With no information coming out of a city … Russian forces could do whatever they wanted. If not for us, there would be nothing.” 

At some point, the Ukrainians who had been sheltering the AP journalists so they could document the reality in Mariupol determined they must get out, lest they be captured and forced by Russian troops to say that what they had reported was a lie. That led to a terrifying escape through 15 Russian checkpoints before getting to safety. 

The New York Times’ reporting focused in part on the death and destruction in another Ukrainian city, Bucha, and holding accountable the Russian military responsible for the massacre there. 

“Times reporters spent months in Bucha after Russian forces withdrew, interviewing residents, collecting vast troves of security camera footage and obtaining exclusive records from government sources,” according to the Times’ story. “In New York, Times investigators analyzed the materials and reconstructed the killings along this one street down to the minute. Some of the most damning evidence implicating the 234th included phone records and decoded call signs used by commanders on Russian radio channels.” 

Despite the Russian government’s strong denials that it was responsible for killing civilians in Bucha, the Times’ journalists reconstructed the killings on Yablonska Street and tied them to a specific Russian military unit.

Using Russian records, phone calls, emails and other documents, the Times also reported extensively about Vladimir Putin, his role behind the badly faltering Russian war effort.

More Pulitzer coverage from Poynter

• Here are the winners of the 2023 Pulitzer Prizes
• AP wins the Breaking News Photography Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of first weeks of the Russian invasion of Ukraine
• A breakdown of Jeff Bezos’ net worth wins the Pulitzer for Illustrated Reporting
• Spotlight on local reporting and Ukraine highlight Pulitzer Prizes
• All roads lead to Alabama for the 2023 Pulitzers
• Here are some of our favorite 2023 Pulitzer celebration tweets
• Opinion | The Pulitzer goes to … Black introspection
• From the archives: Behind the Pulitzers: A look into the inner workings of journalism’s Super Bowl
• From the archives: How do you pronounce Pulitzer?