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L'EXPRESS
L'Express is a French weekly news magazine headquartered in Paris. The weekly stands at the political center in the French media landscape.
365 Days Of Ukraine War, In 19 Magazine Covers
FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Bertrand Hauger and Emma Albright

365 Days Of Ukraine War, In 19 Magazine Covers

A look back on some of the most striking magazine covers published this past year across the globe, marking the milestones in a bloody conflict that is entering its second year.

In the days and weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the international news media was collective wondering whether this seemingly unthinkable war could actually happen. What Will Vladimir Putin Do? … was the question on everyone’s mind.

Once Feb. 24 came, and the Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, the news media attention has been thoroughly consumed by the largest and most dangerous conflict on the European continent since World War II.

We’ve collected magazine covers from around the world over the past 12 months, from the beginning of the invasion and the emergence of Volodymyr Zelensky as an international icon, to the revelations of Russian war crimes in Bucha, the siege of Mariupol and the Ukrainian sinking of the Moskva war ship, and through the slog of trench warfare and bombings of civilian targets.

Here are 19 of the most striking Ukraine war covers from magazines from France, U.S. Italy, Brazil, India, China and beyond.

BRAZIL - Veja

U.S. - The New Yorker

INDIA- India Today

UK - The Economist

BRAZIL - CartaCapital

Mariupol maternity hospital airstrike

U.S. - The New Yorker

ITALY - L'Espresso

Bucha massacre

GERMANY - Der Spiegel

U.S. - TIME

Sinking of the Moskva

FRANCE - Navires & Histoire

BRAZIL - ISTOE

ITALY - Vanity Fair

Maritime grain shipments suspended

FRANCE - Le Point

Bombing of Kyiv

GERMANY - Der Spiegel

CHINA-Caixin

One year of war in Ukraine

UK - The Economist

FRANCE - L'Express

Is Severodonetsk The Next Mariupol?
In The News
Meike Eijsberg, Shaun Lavelle and Cameron Manley

Is Severodonetsk The Next Mariupol?

Russian troops are attempting to encircle Severodonetsk, the last key city remaining under Ukrainian control in the Luhansk region, as Vladimir Putin looks to claim victory in a war that is not going Moscow's way. But will the toll be for civilians?

Severodonetsk, the last key city remaining under Ukrainian control in the Luhansk area, is now the focal point of Russia’s war. In 2014, it had been recaptured from the pro-Russian separatists in a hard-fought battle by Ukrainian forces. Now, eight years later, Moscow is launching an all-out attack to try to take it back again.

Stay up-to-date with the latest on the Russia-Ukraine war, with our exclusive international coverage.

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Alex Crawford, a Sky News correspondent in the region, says Russian forces have the means to conquer the city that in normal times has a population of circa 100,000 — and Moscow will be eager to cite it as the “victory”. But, Crawford wrote, “the path to victory comes – like the capture of the port city of Mariupol – strewn with the broken and battered bodies of the city's citizens.”

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Vladimir Putin during the president's annual press conference in Russia
Geopolitics
Anna Akage

Putin Psychology 101: The World Tries To Get Inside Russian Leader’s Head

Experts in geopolitics and the workings of world leaders have accelerated a two-decade long quest to understand the motivations of the enigmatic man in the Kremlin.

PARISVladimir Putin’s origin story, fed by Russian propaganda into the Western media, centers around his rise to lead Russia after a strategic KGB posting in the closing years of the Cold War. Understanding his current geopolitical ambitions would thus require that we imagine the mindset of a Soviet spymaster ready to manipulate world politics for the past two decades as he attempts to build a new Russian empire.

But what if Putin was nothing more than a desk clerk in his late 1980s posting in the eastern German city of Dresden? If the young functionary was simply a convenient tool plucked by the circle of oligarchs formed around then Russian president Boris Yeltsin to secure their own status? That indeed is the reading from influential Russian blogger and political analyst Maxim Katz, who last year exposed recently declassified documents that Putin was a minor player who went by the codename of “Moth” — not a bear or tiger, or even a hamster!

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