George Gittoes in Ukraine: documenting the brutality of the Russian retreat

Other, however, are more inclined to head towards the danger zone. Here we find the homeland defenders, adrenaline junkies, journalists and photographers powered by a sense of duty to show others, and history, what their eyes have witnessed.

Werri Beach filmmaker and artist George Gittoes and his musician wife Hellen Rose fall somewhere around the latter grouping. Theirs seems to be an artistic, perhaps political but almost spiritual calling, driven by the cause of peace to seek out its very opposite.

So as thousands upon thousands of Ukrainians were fleeing their homeland in the face of indiscriminate Russian shelling and missile strikes, Gittoes and Rose were headed in the opposite direction, taking what was said to be the last train from Poland to Kyiv, cameras in hand and planning to paint a peace mural in the capital - or what would remain of it.

For those who knew them, it wasn't surprising that Gittoes and Rose were headed into harm's way. It's what he's done for years - from Afghanistan (Love City, Jalalabad), Baghdad in Iraq as Saddam Hussain's regime fell (Soundtrack to War), to the south side of Chicago, where gun violence has made suburbs their own war zone (White Light).

In fact the Chicago experience - he spent 18 months living in one of the most dangerous parts of where they call "Chiraq" - was as deadly as any, he said upon returning home, relating how he kisses the grass out the front of his house every time he returns - because "you never do know if you're going to come back from one of these things".

Before he left for Ukraine, Gittoes, 72, said he hoped his documentation of the destruction wrought by Russia might help hasten the end of Vladimir Putin's war.

Specifically, he said he would gather "personal love stories" from soldiers and document the families separated by the conflict. He would have seen on the way from Poland to Kyiv the heartbreaking scenes of fathers saying goodbye to their children and wives, forced to stay and defend their homeland, going through what seemed like a pre-emptive grieving process, such was the perceived might of the Russian forces that were soon to bear down on the newly armed, modestly fortified, citizen defenders.

This work doesn't come without a personal cost. We may be able to see it in Gittoes' eyes in the photographs he sends to the Mercury. There he was shortly after arrival, pictured in Kyiv's main square, introducing viewers via video to the history of that place. He was solemn but resolute.

He spoke of the statue of Dante: "I was surprised at the worried stare of Dante - he was wrapped in sandbags in the park overlooking the Kyiv River. War brings the inanimate to life in this profane and barbaric comedy being played out in the Ukraine.

"The view from Dante's Park enabled us to see the modern city of Kyiv stretching out to the horizon. Tall buildings as extensive as the skyline of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane combined. We did not realise how huge Kyiv is."

As the days have gone on so has the damage and the death toll; more sights to never forget.

From the desperate wrenching apart of families to the bombing of civilian apartment buildings in city suburbs, he was articulating what he saw of the war and how it might develop, offering analysis.

"Having covered Sarajevo during the Bosnian war, I know how hard it is for an army to fight in a city with high-rise concrete buildings," Gittoes said. "I remember Sniper Alley Sarajevo, where the telescopic sights of riflemen positioned in the News Building and Holiday Inn created death traps for anyone on the streets and roads below.

"It was similar in Baghdad ... American patrols described themselves as 'targets with baggage'. It would take years and a huge Russian death toll if they undertook street to street fighting in these avenues upon avenues of high buildings."

Later, the horrific sight of a large animal shelter where the staff had been chased away or killed, leaving hundreds of dogs to fend for themselves, in cages, for 20 days. Many were dead. "It was like going in to Auschwitz or Abu Ghraib but for dogs."

And then, as the most recent pictures show, in the past few days to Bucha, where some of the worst of the Russians war crimes against civilians have been being reported - mass civilian graves, bodies lying in the street, and worse.

"Where we were yesterday was Bordayanka - it is where CNN went today," he wrote on Wednesday night, Kyiv time.

"We were at Bucha today. We are going much worse places tomorrow although that does not seem possible. The war crimes committed by Russians are unbelievably bad. It is hard to process.

"These are very tough days for us - a lot of dead bodies and body parts. I have been avoiding filming the worst images as I can not see how it helps . Catch CNN if possible - they came later than us but it will give you some idea of what we are experiencing.

"But what we have shown is horrific enough."

Still he faces the camera for stills, addressing the viewer, questioning us by his presence: what do you think about this? He must be tired, but his eyes also tell of what he has seen on the roads outside Kyiv as the retreating Russian forces wreaked a brutal path back east.

The coming months, Spring in Ukraine, will reveal the path this conflict takes, and how Gittoes and Rose, who said they would be there for the duration, will meet its challenges, documenting the fate of ordinary people for the sake of others, while keeping their selves intact.

One day soon, we hope, they will be able to kiss that Werri Beach grass again.

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