2022, a year, people decided to move forward from COVID. The world going back to its normal roots, switching back to working from offices, reopening schools, and government allowance for social gatherings. Happiness in everyone’s mind. But the sudden war conditions between the two nations are enough to reduce this joy.

The beginning of the Ukraine-Russia conflict has made everyone restless, including me. I, as a traveler and a photographer, am very much affected by the news, social media posts, and photographs of the current situation of the countries. Let me take you through it.

So, according to my information, the conflict between Ukraine and Russia was in 2014. But, presently, the war began on 24th February 2022, after the separation of two pro-Russian States. Russia declared an invasion against Ukraine. The people, culture, traditions and properties are being bombarded and destroyed for the sake of war.

From the beginning itself, I have seen social media posts and pictures of Ukrainian citizens preparing for the war. Soldiers and non-soldiers were assembling to fight for the country. I saw my videos of people getting emotional while leaving their close ones before the war. In fact, I also read a post by a website on Google, about how people are making sentimental videos of Ukrainian family separations because of the war on the famous app, Tik Tok.

This has also managed to grab my attention and make me feel sentimental as well. Staying away from your family members and fighting for your country, with all the possibilities of negative consequences require a lot of guts. It is quite brave for people to have a great sense of patriotism for the country and to fight for it. I feel a lot more for the humans who are suffering because of regional, political, and cultural issues.

Moving forward, I want to discuss the pictures of tools and weapons in this destruction. I witnessed pictures of bombing over Ukrainian areas. It created havoc inside me. It is unimaginable for a photographer to click pictures of such mass destruction and what it would be like to deal with the thoughts of journalists and photographers. This takes us to the issue of border crossing people and their struggles.

It’s been 14 days since the beginning of this warfare and I read an article about fake border crossing. A person build a fake border and charged Ukrainian citizens with a high amount of money to cross those fake borders. I feel pity for the people in the war area, their weaknesses are being taken advantage of. Money is being made upon their struggles.

And, I saw pictures by many journalists and photographers clicking pictures of the injured and dead soldiers, people striving to ask for help, crossing borders because of the circumstances, losing their properties, houses, assets, etc. The border crossing stories are capable to mentally assault you. The war is not a great did to think about, but it can always ghost you.

I salute the leaders of both countries, Putin (Russian President) for being a powerful decision-maker, and Zelenskky (Ukraine President) for being a motivating leader for the citizens, who has himself stepped into the war field and also fought a battle with social media selfies.

I saw pictures of humanity robbing humanity, but I also have got to know about the incidents where humanity favored humanity via picture. I feel any kind of war is hazardous to humanity and I am not in favor of any particular country because I believe in peace and discussion for any issues.

I have learned a lot from the picture stories about the conflict and this is my perspective about the Ukraine-Russia war. Let me know your opinions in the comments section below.

#Mohitbansal #Mohitbansalchandigarh #Mohitbansalphotographer #Mohitbansalphotography #Mohitbansalphotoshoot #Mohitbansalvideography