Ukrainian emergency employees and volunteers carry Iryna Kalinina, an injured pregnant woman, from a maternity hospital that was damaged by shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, March 9, 2022. EVGENIY MALOLETKA/AP

Associated Press photographer Evgeniy Maloletka won the World Press Photo of the Year award on Thursday for his harrowing image of emergency workers carrying a pregnant woman through the shattered grounds of a maternity hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol in the chaotic aftermath of a Russian attack. The Ukrainian photographer's March 9, 2022 image of the fatally wounded woman, her left hand on her bloodied lower left abdomen, drove home the horror of Russia's brutal onslaught in the eastern port city early in the war.

The 32-year-old woman, Iryna Kalinina, died of her injuries a half-hour after giving birth to the lifeless body of her baby, named Miron.

"For me, it is a moment that all the time I want to forget, but I cannot. The story will always stay with me," Maloletka said in an interview before the announcement.

"Evgeniy Maloletka captured one of the most defining images of the Russia-Ukraine war amid incredibly challenging circumstances. Without his unflinching courage, little would be known of one of Russia's most brutal attacks. We are enormously proud of him," AP Senior Vice President and Executive Editor Julie Pace said.

AP Director of Photography J. David Ake added: "It's not often that a single image becomes seared into the world's collective memory. Evgeniy Maloletka lived up to the highest standards of photojournalism by capturing the 'decisive moment,' while upholding the tradition of AP journalists worldwide to shine a light on what would have otherwise remained unseen."

Maloletka, AP video journalist Mystyslav Chernov and AP producer Vasilisa Stepanenko, who are also Ukrainian, arrived in Mariupol just as Russia's full-scale invasion, which began on Feb. 24, 2022, sparked Europe's biggest conflict since World War II. They stayed for more than two weeks, chronicling the Russian military pounding the city and hitting hospitals and other civilian infrastructure. An AP investigation found that as many as 600 people may have been killed when a Mariupol theater being used as a bomb shelter was hit on March 16 last year.

The three were the only international journalists left in the city when they finally managed a risky escape.

World Press Photo Foundation Executive Director Joumana El Zein Khoury told the AP that jury members decided quickly Maloletka's image should win the prestigious prize.

She said it was "apparent from the beginning that it needed to win. All the jury members said it really from the beginning of the judging. And why? Because it really shows how war and especially in this case, the Ukrainian war, affects not only one generation, but multiple generations."

Maloletka said the team believed it was important to remain in Mariupol, despite the danger, "to collect the people's voices and collect their emotions and to show them all around the world."

A series of photos by Maloletka from besieged Mariupol won the European regional World Press Photo Stories award that was announced in March. Maloletka's images from Mariupol also have been honored with awards including the Knight International Journalism Award, the Visa d'or News Award and the Prix Bayeux Calvados-Normandie.

"I think it is really important that specifically a Ukrainian won the contest showing the atrocities against civilians by Russian forces in Ukraine," he said. "It is important that all the pictures we were doing in Mariupol became evidence of a war crime against Ukrainians."

Some of the work done by Maloletka and his colleagues was targeted by Russian officials, attempting to discredit their reporting. As Moscow was accused of war crimes in Mariupol and other locations in Ukraine, Russian officials claimed the maternity hospital in the southern city had been taken over by Ukrainian extremists to use as a base, and that no patients or medics were left inside. Russia's ambassador to the U.N. and the Russian Embassy in London even dismissed the images as "fake news."

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