‘Where Should We Go?’: Documenting the Russian Bombing of a Maternity Hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine

Mstyslav Chernov was sheltering in the entryway to a building in Mariupol, Ukraine, his camera rolling, when the explosions happened.

A series of booms shook the ground, set off shock waves and car alarms, and sent plumes of smoke into the air.

The Ukrainian AP video journalist kept filming as he ran to the top of the building to see what had been hit. He kept filming as the answer became clear: a hospital, just a few blocks away. He kept filming as he and his AP colleagues, photographer Evgeniy Maloletka and field producer Vasilisa Stepanenko, ran towards the devastation.

What they documented at the site of the March 9, 2022, hospital bombing — a destroyed maternity hospital, panicked and distraught mothers and children, a grievously wounded pregnant woman on a stretcher — would shock the world.

Those moments unfold in harrowing detail in the above excerpt from 20 Days in Mariupol, a feature documentary from FRONTLINE and The Associated Press that had its U.S. broadcast premiere on PBS stations on Nov. 21, 2023, and is now available to stream online.

Chernov and his colleagues were the last international journalists reporting from inside the strategic port city as Russian troops closed in. 20 Days in Mariupol, Chernov’s first feature film, is an unflinching account of the beginning of the siege, from a journalist who risked his life to share the truth of the Ukraine conflict with the world. Chernov and his colleagues kept on documenting the atrocities until they eventually escaped Mariupol, and would ultimately win a Pulitzer Prize for their reporting.

Chernov directed, wrote and produced the documentary, which 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.

In the above excerpt from 20 Days in Mariupol, Chernov documents the aftermath of the maternity hospital bombing, as first responders try to save and comfort the injured and the remaining people are evacuated. One bombing survivor, holding a child in her arms, asks, “Where should we go?”

“I try to find out how many dead and wounded there are,” Chernov says in the excerpt. “But in this chaos, nobody can answer.”

In one indelible scene, Chernov’s camera captures a pregnant woman being carried out of the hospital on a stretcher, her face pale, her hands cradling and fluttering around her injured pelvis. Both she and her baby would later die.

Later, Chernov follows a Ukrainian soldier walking through the decimated, evacuated hospital ward, now strewn with rubble, debris, and shattered medical equipment.

“Is there anyone alive?” the soldier asks.

As the film explores, Chernov and his colleagues’ reporting elicited a global outcry, but Russian officials claimed the attack was “a fully staged provocation,” and that the hospital had previously been seized by Ukrainian “radicals.”

“All the pregnant women, all the nurses, all the service personnel were already expelled from there,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

What Chernov captured showed otherwise.

“Guys, your reporting spread. You did a big thing,” a Ukrainian police officer tells Mstyslav and his colleagues in the documentary. “Otherwise, no one would know what happened.”

For the full story, watch 20 Days in Mariupol:

The documentary premiered on Nov. 21, 2023. It is available to watch on FRONTLINE’s website, FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel, the PBS App and the PBS Documentaries Prime Video Channel. 20 Days in Mariupol is a FRONTLINE production with The Associated Press. The director, cinematographer and writer is Mstyslav Chernov. The field producer is Vasilisa Stepanenko. The still photographer is Evgeniy Maloletka. The editor is Michelle Mizner. The composer is Jordan Dykstra. The producers are Mstyslav Chernov, Michelle Mizner, Raney Aronson-Rath (FRONTLINE’s editor-in-chief and executive producer) and Derl McCrudden (AP’s vice president of news and head of global news production). 20 Days in Mariupol is distributed domestically by PBS Distribution and internationally by Dogwoof.

This story has been updated.