A week before the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the eastern Ukrainian city of Avdiivka fell to Russia. It was the latest development in a war that is now entering its third year.

FRONTLINE has covered the conflict since the Feb. 24, 2022, invasion began, including by documenting possible war crimes and the grim toll the fighting has taken on civilians. A two-year update report released this month by the United Nations Human Rights Office puts the number of Ukrainian civilian casualties at almost 10,600 people killed, and nearly 20,000 injured. However, the U.N. notes that the actual number of casualties is likely significantly higher.

Millions of Ukrainians have also been displaced by the conflict, with many former residents of besieged and bombarded cities forced to seek safety in western Ukraine or abroad. Almost 6.5 million people, the vast majority of them women and children, have fled the country, while almost 3.7 million people remain displaced within Ukraine’s borders, according to U.N. data.

Surveys conducted by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies this month found almost 52% of Ukrainians living inside the country and abroad are struggling to have their basic needs for medical assistance, housing and employment met. As fighting has damaged homes and attacks to energy infrastructure have disrupted access to electricity, running water and healthcare, the U.N. estimates that 14.6 million Ukrainians will be in need of humanitarian assistance in 2024.

On the front lines, Ukrainian forces face a lack of military resources and manpower, putting efforts to retake territory from the Russian military in jeopardy.

While it’s difficult to know the exact number of soldiers killed in the war so far, a recent New York Times report said the Pentagon estimates the Russian military has had nearly 300,000 casualties, 60,000 of them fatalities. U.S. officials have estimated that as many as 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died and twice that number have been injured. In an effort to shore up its troop numbers, the Ukrainian government is considering whether to lower the minimum age for conscription from 27 to 25.

Ukraine is also attempting to bolster its military capabilities by building its own military vehicles and drones. However, the first vehicles aren’t expected to be available until 2025 — and larger quantities aren’t anticipated to be ready until 2026.

The war effort in Ukraine is also dependent on foreign aid from Western allies. While a $54 billion aid package for Ukraine was approved by the European Union in early February, aid from the U.S. is less certain. A U.S. Senate-backed $95 billion foreign aid package has stalled in the U.S. House, with Republicans divided on the measure. Around $60 billion in security assistance to Ukraine’s war effort hangs in the balance.

Over the past two years, FRONTLINE has covered the war’s evolution exhaustively, producing award-winning content that brings viewers inside the conflict. In documentaries, interactives, written stories and collections of in-depth interviews, FRONTLINE has probed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s grievances with the West and what led up to his invasion of Ukraine, examined the war’s global ramifications and investigated the brutal toll it has taken on Ukrainian civilians. On the second anniversary of the invasion, explore a collection of our related reporting below.

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20 Days in Mariupol (November 2023)

This feature-length film, which is nominated for an Academy Award and won the BAFTA Award for Best Documentary earlier this month, follows an AP team of Ukrainian journalists trapped in the besieged city of Mariupol while they struggle to continue their work documenting atrocities of the Russian invasion. As the only international reporters who remain in the city as Russian forces close in, they capture what become some of the most defining images of the war: dying children, mass graves, the bombing of a maternity hospital, and more.

The FRONTLINE and Associated Press documentary 20 Days in Mariupol, directed, written and produced by Chernov, offers a visceral, first-person account of what Mariupol endured during the first weeks of the Russian siege. The film, which will be screened by the U.S. State Department at an event on Feb. 27 in connection with the war’s two-year anniversary, was edited and produced by Michelle Mizner and also produced by FRONTLINE’s editor-in-chief and executive producer Raney Aronson-Rath and AP’s vice president of news and head of global news production Derl McCrudden.

Listen to a conversation with Chernov and Mizner on The FRONTLINE Dispatch podcast.

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Putin vs. the Press (September 2023)

Since the start of the Ukraine war, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his government have carried out an intense crackdown on the press — branding journalists as “foreign agents,” and threatening anyone who calls the Ukraine conflict an invasion or act of war with up to 15 years in prison.

The documentary Putin vs. the Press tells the story of one journalist and his battle to defend free speech in Putin’s Russia: Nobel prize-winner Dmitry Muratov. With unique access, the film follows Muratov as he fights to keep his newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, alive and his reporters safe amid the government’s crackdown. Patrick Forbes directed the documentary. The producers are Yelena Durden-Smith and Vanessa Tuson. Dan Edge served as senior producer.

Listen to a conversation with Forbes on The FRONTLINE Dispatch.

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Putin’s Crisis (July 2023)

It was described as the most serious threat to Putin’s leadership in years: the armed rebellion on June 23, 2023, led by the Russian mercenary Wagner Group and its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin. While the mutiny ended quickly, it raised questions about whether Putin’s grip on power may be slipping amid discontent around his troubled war on Ukraine.

In the documentary Putin’s Crisis, FRONTLINE examined the story of Putin’s rise, his clashes at home and abroad, and how his troubled Ukraine war led to the greatest threat yet to his grip on power. The documentary was directed by veteran filmmaker Michael Kirk, and produced by Kirk, Mike Wiser and Vanessa Fica.

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War Crimes Watch Ukraine (March 2022-Feb. 2023)

Shortly after Russia’s invasion began, FRONTLINE and The Associated Press launched a yearlong reporting effort to gather, verify and comprehensively catalog evidence of potential war crimes committed during one of the largest conflicts in Europe since the end of World War II. We documented more than 650 incidents involving potential war crimes in our interactive tracker, and we co-published stories documenting reports of Russian torture, targeting of Ukrainian schools, attacks on hospitals, Russian-run grain smuggling operations and a pattern of “strategic and organized brutality” in areas under the command of one of Putin’s top generals.

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Ukraine: Life Under Russia’s Attack (updated February 2023)

In this documentary, which first aired in August 2022, FRONTLINE chronicled the lives of civilians and first responders in Kharkiv in the initial months of Russia’s assault. The updated version of the documentary revisits many of the people profiled in the original film, sharing how nearly a year of war reshaped their lives, their city and their country.

The documentary was filmed, produced, and directed in Ukraine by Mani Benchelah and Patrick Tombola with producer Volodymyr Pavlov, with additional direction by Teresa Smith and executive production by Oscar-nominated filmmakers Ben de Pear and Edward Watts (For Sama) and Oscar winner Cate Blanchett.

Listen to a conversation with Benchelah and Tombola on The FRONTLINE Dispatch podcast.

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Putin and the Presidents (January 2023)

This documentary investigated Putin’s clashes with multiple American presidents, from Bill Clinton to Joe Biden, as he’s tried to expand Russia’s influence and territory. Drawing on in-depth conversations with insiders from five U.S. presidential administrations, former U.S. intelligence leaders, diplomats, and Russian and American journalists, the film showed how, prior to launching the war on Ukraine, Putin tested the waters by provoking and defying American presidents for 20 years — including by invading Georgia, seizing Crimea, and interfering in a U.S. presidential election. Filmmaker Michael Kirk and his team, including producers Mike Wiser and Vanessa Fica, traced a string of missteps and miscalculations by U.S. presidents, culminating in Putin’s February 2022 attack on Ukraine.

Plus: Watch and read extended interviews from the making of Putin and the Presidents with Sec. of State Antony Blinken, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, journalist Julia Ioffe and more, published as part of the FRONTLINE Transparency Project.

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Crime Scene: Bucha (December 2022)

FRONTLINE, The Associated Press and SITU Research teamed up on a visual investigation of the atrocities committed in the Ukrainian town of Bucha during Russia’s monthlong occupation in 2022. Drawing on hundreds of hours of CCTV footage, intercepted phone calls and a digital 3D model of Bucha, Crime Scene: Bucha mapped the scope of the carnage in the town — more than 450 deaths in all — and charted in forensic detail how Russian soldiers ran “cleansing” operations. The short documentary — which featured a visualization made using a high-resolution 3D dataset of Bucha that was assembled with drone footage captured by the Ukrainian citizen research group Jus Talionis — was produced and edited by Jon Nealon, produced and directed in Ukraine by Tom Jennings and Annie Wong, and produced and reported by AP’s Erika Kinetz.

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Putin’s War at Home (November 2022)

FRONTLINE told the stories of defiant Russians risking arrest and imprisonment to report on or protest Russia’s war in Ukraine. The documentary chronicled the lives of people speaking out against the Kremlin’s war effort despite laws that have effectively made it a crime to oppose the war — from an artist who would go on to be sentenced to seven years in prison after posting anti-war stickers in a grocery store, to a university professor whose parents live in Ukraine, to a young woman whose TikToks have gone viral internationally. The documentary also showed how independent journalists in Russia continued to seek the truth about the war — including the death toll among the country’s soldiers, information that Russia has deemed a state secret. For more on Putin’s crackdown on dissent inside Russia — and people who are refusing to stay silent — listen to a conversation with director and producer Gesbeen Mohammad on The FRONTLINE Dispatch podcast, and read a Q&A with her and producer Vasiliy Kolotilov.

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Putin’s Attack on Ukraine: Documenting War Crimes (October 2022)

Part of FRONTLINE and the Associated Press’s broader collaboration investigating the war, this 90-minute special investigation traced a pattern of atrocities on the ground in Ukraine and the challenges of trying to hold Russia to account. From directors and producers Tom Jennings and Annie Wong, AP global investigative reporter Erika Kinetz and her AP colleagues, the documentary drew on original footage; interviews with Ukrainian citizens and prosecutors, top government officials and international war crimes experts; and a vast amount of previously unpublished evidence — including hundreds of hours of surveillance camera videos and thousands of audio recordings of intercepted phone calls made by Russian soldiers around Ukraine’s capital city, Kyiv. Listen to a conversation with Kinetz on The FRONTLINE Dispatch podcast about how she and the film team uncovered a pattern of “strategic violence.”

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Putin’s Road to War (March 2022)

Conducting new interviews in the days after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine began, filmmaker Michael Kirk and his team examined the events that shaped the Russian leader, the grievances that drive him and how a growing conflict with the West exploded into war in Europe. The reporting behind the documentary also drew on dozens of interviews FRONTLINE conducted over the prior five years about Putin’s rise to power. You can explore the interview collection as part of the FRONTLINE Transparency Project.

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