FRONTLINE and AP Reporters Document Potential War Crimes in Ukraine

Soon after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, accounts of atrocities started emerging — and a team of reporters from FRONTLINE and The Associated Press began investigating them.

Now, a 90-minute documentary from the two organizations, Putin’s Attack on Ukraine: Documenting War Crimes, uncovers a pattern of violence and potential war crimes committed during Russia’s brutal military campaign — and examines the quest for accountability.

The documentary, which premieres Tues., Oct. 25 on PBS and online, is part of a larger editorial collaboration between FRONTLINE and AP that includes “War Crimes Watch Ukraine,” a multiplatform initiative that has been gathering, verifying and documenting potential war crimes, including direct attacks on civilians and sites protected under international humanitarian law.

A month into the invasion, FRONTLINE and AP had documented about 100 attacks involving potential war crimes.

“We were starting to see videos showing a lot of civilian deaths, bodies in the street,” AP reporter Michael Biesecker, who participated in the effort to document potential war crimes, says in the above excerpt from the documentary.

By the end of October, the reporting team had verified more than 530 incidents.

Examine the incidents: War Crimes Watch Ukraine

The team’s findings unfold in Putin’s Attack on Ukraine: Documenting War Crimes. From award-winning director Tom Jennings (Boeing’s Fatal Flaw, Opioids, Inc.) and producer Annie Wong (Opioids, Inc.), the documentary follows AP global investigative reporter Erika Kinetz and her colleagues as they interview Ukrainian prosecutors, top government officials and international war crimes experts — as well as Ukrainian citizens who have lost loved ones.

“Russian soldiers killed my husband,” says Tania Boikiv, whose story about the abduction and killing of her husband is featured in the documentary.

Read more: ‘They Took My Big Love’: Ukraine Woman Searches for Answers

Putin’s Attack on Ukraine: Documenting War Crimes draws on previously unpublished evidence obtained and verified by the AP and FRONTLINE, including hundreds of hours of surveillance camera videos, as well as audio recordings of intercepted phone calls made by Russian soldiers.

It also traces the violence around the Kyiv suburbs to one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top generals. “General Chaiko — this was his zone of command. That battlespace was his responsibility,” The AP’s Erika Kinetz says in the excerpt.

The film also follows the effort to hold Putin accountable for waging the war, through a proposed international tribunal.

“Putin takes us back almost to the Middle Ages. The idea of siege warfare. The idea that there is no civilian immunity,” Stephen Rapp, a former war crimes prosecutor, says of Russia’s style of warfare in the above excerpt.

But the documentary also exposes the challenges of prosecuting war crimes and holding leaders to account by tracing how modern war crimes laws first emerged and how they have been applied to different global conflicts since.

“The most responsible people are those who decided to wage this illegal war against Ukraine, period,” Philippe Sands, an historian and international human rights lawyer, says in the excerpt.

For the full story, watch Putin’s Attack on Ukraine: Documenting War Crimes, premiering Tues., Oct. 25 at 10/9c on PBS stations (check local listings), at pbs.org/frontline, in the PBS Video App and on FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel. The documentary is a FRONTLINE production with 2Over10Media in association with The Associated Press. The directors are Thomas Jennings and Annie Wong. The producers are Thomas Jennings, Annie Wong and Erika Kinetz. The co-producers are Taras Lazer, Timothy Grucza and Scott Anger. The writer is Thomas Jennings. The correspondent is Erika Kinetz. The senior producer is Frank Koughan. The editor-in-chief and executive producer of FRONTLINE is Raney Aronson-Rath.