As this weekend marks two years since the beginning of the Ukrainian conflict, Walkley-award winning Canberra Times photographer Gary Ramage can still recall the heartbreaking scenes of his two-month stint inside the war-torn country as if they were yesterday.
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"The Russians were then, and still are now, conducting a war of attrition, psychological and physical; it was just brutal," he said.
"While the focus of the world media has shifted away from the Ukraine because of what's happening in Gaza, that fierce struggle in the Ukraine is going on and on.
"It's so hard to believe that two years of the conflict has passed."
As a freelance photographer, he witnessed the deliberate targeting of the civilian population by the Russian military machine; mortars and rockets reducing homes to rubble and people left with nothing but the clothes on their back.
"We were in a little village called Andriivka, outside Kyiv, when we came across a 73-year-old woman sitting in her driveway alone, her house destroyed.
"She was just sobbing. She'd lost everything.
"And we sat with her and she told us her story, we started bawling, too.
"These are always really tough stories to tell and pictures to take but you have to do it because these are the stories that really matter; it's holding those bastards [Russians] to account."
Ramage is no stranger to war zones. He'd covered the Afghan war for 15 years, on and off, imbedded with Australian, British and US forces.
As a freelance photographer, he'd made his way to Warsaw in neighbouring Poland, taken the train to Krakow, then made his way to the border town of Lviv. The border was thronging with people, trucks and equipment coming in and out of the Ukraine.
"It [the border] was just packed; you have aid organisations and NGOs (non-government organisations] bringing all this material in and people evacuating out," he said.
During his two months on the ground, he saw irrefutable evidence of how the Russians were remorselessly targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure.
But as the pain, the destruction and the fighting continues, he remains convinced the Ukrainians will prevail against the odds.
"They are a very proud people," he said. "They are not going to give up. They are fighting to protect their homeland."
