TIME contract photographer Yuri Kozyrev has traveled on assignment to Afghanistan and Iraq countless times in the past 15 years, documenting just about every aspect of America’s on-going wars. His most recent assignment this past January took him to Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, where he photographed the U.S. preparations to bring home the men and material of war after more than a decade of fighting.

While editing Kozyrev’s take, TIME’s international picture editor Patrick Witty noticed a similarity between several of the photographs. Looking back through the archive of the photographer’s work, Witty discovered that Kozyrev had made similar images of soldiers awaiting takeoff in a C-17 Globemaster—the plane that will take them out of the combat zone and, eventually, back to the States—in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Despite being taken almost three years apart, the photographs are visually similar—a subtle reminder that despite changing names, locations and circumstances, the tradition of war itself is a patterned response with a long history.


Above: August 2010:  U.S. soldiers from the Virginia National Guard’s 1st Battalion, 116th Infantry Regiment await takeoff as they head home from Camp Adder in Iraq. The unit mobilized in January 2010 and was originally scheduled to serve a 12-month tour of federal active duty.

Below: January 2013: Soldiers from the 101st Airborne and 1st Infantry Divisions await takeoff in the C-17 Globemaster that will take them from Bagram to Manas Airbase in Kyrgyzstan. There, they will await contracted flights home.

Photographs by Yuri Kozyrev documenting America’s long withdrawl from Afghanistan featured in the latest issue of TIME. 

Nov. 28, 2012. Cairo, Egypt. A protester finds cover behind a destroyed vehicle at the scene of clashes with Egyptian police near Tahrir Square. (Photo: Moises Saman—Magnum for TIME)

Throughout 2012, TIME’s unparalleled photojournalists were there. At a time when so much hangs in the balance, bearing witness can be the most essential act — and that’s what we do. Here’s the best of our commissioned photojournalism from 2012. See more on LightBox.

Mohammed Absullah Al-Walid, 24, deputy commander of Zinjibar’s ‘Popular Committee’ with his fighters. Popular Committees–armed groups of citizens who rose against al-Qaeda–were key to the Yemeni government’s ability to reclaim Abyan province.

TIME contract photographer Yuri Kozyrev and editor-at-large Bobby Ghosh traveled to southern Abyan province in Yemen for this week’s cover story in TIME International. Here, Ghosh recounts their travels with a Yemeni Central Security Force (CSF) patrol through territory plagued by al-Qaeda. 

See more photos here.

Boys train to become professional wrestlers at their school in Khasav-Yurt, Russia.

The dusty Russian town of Khasav-Yurt, which the locals like to call the Wrestlers’ Mecca, boasts the greatest concentration of wrestling champions in the world. Photographer Yuri Kozyrev documented the young athletes at their school in the North Caucasus.

See more photos here.

The head of the Syrian delegation to the arms bazaar tries out a new silencer-equipped Kalashnikov assault rifle.

TIME contract photographer Yuri Kozyrev’s look inside the Russian weapons bazaar that is powering Syria’s regime.

See more photos here.

Yuri Kozyrev—NOOR for TIME

To illustrate this week’s cover story on the Egyptian elections, TIME turned to contract photographer Yuri Kozyrev, who’s been documenting the Arab Spring since it’s beginnings in early 2011. Covering Egypt’s electoral process and runoff, Kozyrev captured the celebrations and protests after Mohamed Morsy was declared President. One of Kozyrev’s more powerful photos  of a Morsy supporter was chosen for the cover of this week’s issue. 

“We originally mocked up more than a dozen covers,” explained Victor Williams, TIME’s international art director, “but we were looking for a single, arresting image. We finally settled on this image [of a masked protestor] staring directly at the viewer. That the new President’s face appears on his mask is so powerful, with his disguised but commanding allegiance. We loved that he was staring directly at the viewer.” 

Visit LightBox for more of Kozyrev’s photographs from Cairo. To read TIME’s cover story, How The Military Won The Egyptian Election, click here.

Supporters of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsy celebrate in Tahrir square after the Brotherhood claimed victory in the presidential vote. 

Days after the country’s first democratic presidential vote, the question of who won remains a matter of contention.

See more of Yuri Kozyrev’s photos from Egypt here.

The tomb of Sultan Mohammed Telai, great-great grandfather of Nadir Shir, an Afghan king. Its arches are decorated in Italianate stucco, but the tomb itself is badly damaged and graffitied. The strategic location of the hill is readily apparent from here, and was much fought over in the 1990s.

Yuri Kozyrev visited Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai, and saw a Kabul that has been shaped by war. See more here.

March 31, 2012. Children play with slingshots in Sirte, the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s hometown. Sirte was one of the last loyalist strongholds in the nearly year-long war that ended the 42-year regime of Muammar Gaddafi, and it sustained more damage than any other Libyan city—in just a little over a month of heavy fighting. Many residents who admit to having been Gaddafi supporters now worry about what will become of them in the new Libya.

Abigail Hauslohner drove across Libya with photographer Yuri Kozyrev, and found a new country along the way. See more here.