Up close and personal

From children's funerals to underground shelters, Ukrainian Julia Kochetova has captured the war in her homeland with power and humanity. 'I have the same scars as the people I photograph,' she says ahead of a major show

- By Charlotte Higgins

JULIA KOCHETOVA IS UNLIKE MOST OF THE PEOPLE who cover Russia's invasion of Ukraine for the Guardian. The photographer lives in Kyiv; she is Ukrainian. It is her country that is being invaded, her friends who are being killed.

The war that began in 2014 and brutally escalated on 24 February in 2022 has infused every part of her existence. It is fundamental to her life choices, her relationships, her friendships, her career (when she was younger she had planned to go to art school in Germany, but photojournalism beckoned). She is at home on the frontline, and could give you battlefield first aid. She is also a vegetarian who makes an exception for meat-based borsch; reads poetry when we're on the road together; and can wash and brush out her waist-length hair in unusual locations and at surprising speed. Her driving style lies somewhere on the spectrum between chaotic and shrewd, and she can recommend you a good place for a manicure in Kyiv. She is 32 years old. She has organised more funerals than anyone should have to do in a lifetime.

Born and raised in the central Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia, the daughter of an economist and a lecturer in German, Kochetova is at home in Kyiv this morning, between assignments, having woken up without electricity, the result of a winter of relentless Russian attacks on power infrastructure that has left ordinary people freezing in their homes.

We first met on 16 October 2022, when I was in Kyiv writing about artists' responses to Russia's full-scale invasion. She had just come back from the frontline in the Donetsk region. She was photographing ballet dancers - beautifully capturing their fleetness and strength. This was her first assignment with the Guardian.