On the day she had been due to give birth last year, Viktoria Shishkina was asleep on the first floor of the maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine—then under siege by Russian forces. That morning was unusually quiet—until the strike that changed everything. The bombing of the maternity hospital was an early watershed in a war that shattered Ms. Shishkina’s city—and her life. In the wake of the blast, the image of a pregnant woman with blood smeared on her face became a symbol of Russia’s aggression. Another woman was photographed on a stretcher clutching her pregnant belly.

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