World Press Photo 2025 has announced the regional winners: two Russians, a Belarusian and a German with projects from Ukraine

The international organization World Press Photo has announced 42 regional winners of its annual documentary photography competition. This year's competition received 59,320 photos from 3,778 photographers from 141 countries. Among the winners are two Russian photographers, one photographer from Belarus, and two German documentary photographers who have taken pictures of the Russian-Ukrainian war. One of them is a portrait of a Ukrainian child. The other is a wounded occupier from the “DPR” in a field hospital near Bakhmut.

This year's jury emphasizes that the winning photos are more than a document. “Winning photos are those that make us stop, or at least pause and think, not just scroll on. Many of these images transcend the moment in which they were taken - they have become symbols of something significant from a social, political or historical point of view,” said Finbar O'Reilly, the European jury chairman.

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Ukraine in focus: two photographs tell two truths of war

In the Single Photographs category, two works from Europe were recognized for showing the war in Ukraine from different angles. The jury called them a “visual pair” that conveys both the physical and psychological dimensions of the conflict.

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Florian Bachmeyer, a German photographer, showed six-year-old Angelina from Kharkiv region, who suffers from panic attacks after fleeing shelling. His work Beyond the Trenches “became the emotional center of the European bloc.”

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Nanna Heitmann, a Magnum Photos photographer for The New York Times, presented a photo from Underground Field Hospital depicting a wounded DPR fighter who fought for the Russian army.

Russian photographers

For the first time since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russians are among the winners of the competition. This came as a surprise, because after the victory of Ukrainian Yevhen Malolotka in 2023 and the revelations of large-scale Russian disinformation campaigns, a Russian victory in the competition seemed unlikely.

Mikhailo Tereshchenko, a photojournalist for the Russian state news agency TASS, won the Photographic Stories category for his series Protests in Georgia. The series documented massive anti-Russian protests in Tbilisi against the suspension of Georgia's EU accession negotiations. Paradoxically, a Russian received the award for a photo essay about protests against Russian influence.

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Another award went to Alyona Kardash, a Russian woman living in Germany. Her project It Smells of Smoke at Home won in the Long-Term Projects category. In it, the author explores the psychological detachment of modern Russia from reality, where war is called a “special operation.”

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Belarusian photographer Tatiana Chipsanova also won in the Southeast Asia and Oceania category. Her project is dedicated to the ancestors of the Ngai Tahu Maori tribe in New Zealand.

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Reaction of Ukrainian photographers

The announcement of the contest results sparked a debate among Ukrainian photographers. Last year's World Press Photo winner, author of the War is Personal project Yulia Kochetova, criticized this year's jury's choice:

“Obviously, I am surprised to see so much attention to the narrative of the 'Russian soul' among this year's regional winners. I can't imagine how Georgian photographers feel because their protests against Russian influence were shown through the images of a photographer from a Russian state agency. This is a personal responsibility - how this war will be told in years to come. It is important to continue to testify and document.”

Documentary filmmaker Alina Smutko also commented on the situation on Instagram: “Dozens of Georgian photographers have been documenting protests in their country against Russian influence, but their work is obviously nothing compared to a photographer from a Russian state agency.”

Last year, the Ukrainian Association of Professional Photographers (UAPF) officially opposed the participation of Russian Maria Gelman in the jury of the World Press Photo 2024 competition. The association called her inclusion in the five-member panel of European judges, who, among other things, evaluated Ukrainian works, an illogical step that could call into question the objectivity of the competition. The UAPF also emphasized that the presence of a representative of the Russian Federation in such a role during the full-scale, brutal and unprovoked war that Russia has been waging against Ukraine since 2014 raises numerous ethical questions.

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UAPP position

The Board of the Ukrainian Association of Professional Photographers is surprised by the results of this year's World Press Photo 2025 international competition. By rewarding Russian photographers who serve as expressors of the state ideology of the Russian Federation, the competition makes the position of the aggressor visible, and thus contributes to the substitution of concepts: instead of condemning the aggressor, it emphasizes sympathy for him. In our opinion, such an award does not meet the stated goal of the competition, which is to connect the world with important stories, especially in the situation of the war of aggression that Russia has been waging against Ukraine for 11 years.

Given the importance of such competitions for the Ukrainian and international photography community, we emphasize the importance of maintaining high standards of ethics, impartiality and transparency.

Only under such conditions is it possible to fairly evaluate works that document reality, reflect the truth and give a voice to those who are often silenced. It is also a way to counteract any form of propaganda or disinformation in the international information space.