Russia invaded Ukraine Thursday, plunging Europe into war, and the most common photo used to illustrate the news in front pages across the U.S. was a photo of Russia’s Vladimir Putin taken the day before by a Kremlin pool photographer.
Alexei Nikolsky, credited by the Associated Press as a photographer for Russian state-owned news agency Sputnik, photographed Putin at a wreath-laying ceremony at Russia’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow Wednesday to commemorate the Russian national military holiday Defenders of the Fatherland Day.
Newspapers including the Anchorage Daily News and Pioneer Press in St. Paul, Minn., above, used an Associated Press photo of Russian armored vehicles loaded onto railway platforms on Wednesday not far from the Russia-Ukraine border. The photo does not have a photographer credit. More than 175,000 Russian troops are estimated to have massed along the Ukraine-Russia border in recent weeks.
Several big city papers led with photos of Ukrainian soldiers, including the New York Times, Houston Chronicle, and the Seattle Times, which used photos by Taylor Hicks and Evgeniy Maloletka.
The early hours of the invasion didn’t produce photojournalism that necessarily captured the significance of the news, and a number of newspapers opted to go without a photo and let the headlines speak for themselves, including the Arizona Republic (“Russia attacks Ukraine”") and the Las Vegas Review-Journal (“Russia begins assault”).
The most concise headline, though, goes to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, with “Invasion.”
Because Putin’s announcement came out in the early morning in Europe, it was too late to make the morning papers there. In Canada, though, the story was front page on newspapers including the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, and Calgary Herald.
It was also front page news in Mexico.
In Australia, where it’s already tomorrow, Friday papers show images of an explosion near Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, and the bloodied face of a woman who was wounded in an airstrike that damaged an apartment complex near Kharkiv, Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a televised address that 137 people have died so far in the invasion.
President Joe Biden announced sanctions against Russia Thursday in an address in the East Room. The sanctions include partnering with allies to limit Russia’s ability to do business in dollars, euros, pounds, and yen; sanctions for Russian oligarchs; and severing five Russian banks from the U.S. financial system.
“This aggression cannot go unanswered,” Biden said. “If it did, the consequences for America would be much worse. America stands up to bullies. We stand up for freedom. This is who we are.”
This is not a “meme”
The official verified Twitter account for Ukraine tweeted an image of Hilter and Putin today and followed it up with “This is not a ‘meme’, but our and your reality right now.”
Former first lady Melania Trump’s NFTs are getting Trumpified as she caters aesthetically to MAGA Nation. Read about it here. — Hunter
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