Harriet Salem | Journalist

On April 6th 2014 pro-Russian protesters seized Donetsk administration building in the east of Ukraine. Armed with baseball bats and metal poles they barricaded themselves inside and declared the building the headquarters of the 'Donetsk People's Republic' an unrecognised micro-state, triggering a conflict that would claim more than 9,000 lives. (Photo by Harriet Salem)

In the days that followed protesters, including personnel from local security services, seized government buildings across Ukraine's east in an operation widely thought to be coordinated by Moscow. Here a crowd gather outside Sloviansk administration building overrun by armed rebels on April 12th. On the barricade youths in balaclavas raise the flag of the 'Donetsk People's Republic'. Sloviansk quickly became the heartland of pro-Russian groups seeking to separate from Ukraine. (Photo by Harriet Salem)

A fighter from the Donbas Battalion, a pro-Ukrainian faction, is treated by a nurse and doctor after a gunfight with pro-Russian forces in XX. The clash was one of the first armed confrontations in the conflict in east Ukraine. (Photo by Harriet Salem)

A pro-Russian rebel patrols Sloviansk