A photographic exhibition “Ukraine: A War Crime,” featuring a collection of 50 images depicting the suffering, the drama and the struggle of Ukrainian people to defend their homeland and democracy opened today at the Centre of Openness and Dialogue (COD) at the Prime Minister’s Office in Tirana ahead of the first visit of the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to Albania on February 28.

“Ukraine: A War Crime,” a collection of photographs that offer visual evidence of the violence and war crimes committed on Ukrainian soil, is part of the collaborative book with the same title bringing together a large group of photojournalists from all over the world, produced and published by FotoEvidence.

The book Ukraine: A War Crime is a collection of over 360 photographs and witness accounts by ninety photojournalists from 29 countries united to present their firsthand testimony about the Russian invasion of Ukraine from the perspective of those tasked with documenting it. The images and reportages provide viewers with an insight into the humanitarian catastrophe, and war crimes investigations.

Prime Minister Edi Rama attended the opening ceremony of this rare exhibition:

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Hello everyone! 

I would like to particularly extend my greetings to the Ukrainian Ambassador, who has joined us tonight and I would also like to thank all of those who took over this initiative and succeeded in finalizing it at a moment like this. I refer it as a moment like this, because the exhibition opens on the eve of President Zelensky’s arrival in Tirana on both a bilateral visit, also to attend the Ukraine–South-East Europe Summit, where a considerable number of leaders of this part of Europe will be invited and President Zelensky will co-host and co-chair the event, which is of special importance in today’s context.

No word would properly depict what is happening in Ukraine and that the exhibition features movie-like photos with a cinematic look, but they are photographs taken every hour, every day and night in the lives of the Ukrainian people under the under the savagery of Russian aggression, a completely unprovoked, unjustified and unjustifiable aggression.

Albania stands side by side with Ukraine, together with the entire alliance of countries that have chosen to look to the future and build together the future, where every country, people, every individual has the right to freedom, the right to living as equals under the umbrella of the law and the democratic Constitution. Russia’s aggression on Ukraine is an attempt to force the right to live in the past and it is a clash between two worlds, two completely different ways of seeing the world and of seeing human kind, of seeing countries and to understand their non-negotiable right to territorial integrity.

I would like to reiterate today our steadfast unity with Ukraine and the Ukrainian people. These pictures come from a front where is being fought, where human lives are lost and properties are destroyed, where people live day and night under the repression of sirens that warn of the next wave of bombardment.

Thank you!