Two AP journalists in Ukraine and the Mideast break down the wars they covered in 2024

For the world, 2024 was riven by — and in some ways defined by — conflict on two fronts.

The ripples after the previous year's Hamas attacks in Israel left Gaza a shambles and tens of thousands dead, and an adjacent conflict between Israel and Hezbollah is playing out across the Lebanon landscape as the year ends.

A continent away, the Russia-Ukraine war, which began with Russia's invasion in early 2022, rages on and evolves, claiming more casualties as it goes.

Associated Press journalists have been covering these conflicts since they began. Now, as 2024 ends and a new year begins, we asked two veteran AP reporters — Josef Federman in Jerusalem and Samya Kullab in Kyiv — to talk about what they saw the past year and what struck them. Here are their accounts: