Russia’s War on Ukraine Enters Its Fourth Year

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began three years ago this week, and the war has become the deadliest European conflict since World War II.

At least 12,456 Ukrainian civilians were killed between February 2022 and December 2024 and more than 30,000 were injured, according to a United Nations report released in January. The war has also displaced millions of Ukrainians, with close to seven million fleeing the country altogether, most of them women and children.

The future of the war is increasingly unclear as it enters its fourth year. President Donald Trump has embarked on a new strategy of negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, while tensions mount between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

FRONTLINE has covered the conflict since it began on Feb. 24, 2022, with award-winning documentaries and reporting initiatives including the film 20 Days in Mariupol, a collaboration with The Associated Press, documenting the start of the invasion.

Our documentaries over the last three years have investigated Putin’s grievances with the West, the circumstances that led up to his invasion of Ukraine, the pattern of atrocities carried out by Russian forces, the grim toll the fighting has taken on civilians and the Russian crackdown on critics of the war.

Our coverage continues with 2000 Meters to Andriivka, a new documentary in collaboration with the AP, from the team behind 20 Days in Mariupol. The feature documentary, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January, closely follows Ukrainian soldiers as they fight in the trenches to recapture a strategic village from the Russians.

As this conflict marks a somber milestone, explore a collection of our coverage below.

20 Days in Mariupol (November 2023)

This feature-length film from FRONTLINE and The Associated Press, which won an Academy Award® in 2024, 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. (Credits)

Podcast: Documenting the Siege of Mariupol

Children of Ukraine (April 2024)

This documentary examines how thousands of Ukrainian children have been taken and held in Russian-controlled territory since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Children of Ukraine follows Ukrainian families searching for their missing children, organizations investigating the alleged abductions and Ukrainian teenagers who escaped and say they were subjected to Russian propaganda. (Credits)

Podcast: The Search for Ukraine’s Missing Children

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 Peace Prize-winner Dmitry Muratov. (Credits)

Podcast: From Russian Newspaper Editor to ‘Foreign Agent’

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.

The documentary Putin’s Crisis examines 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. (Credits)

War Crimes Watch Ukraine (March 2022-February 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.

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

This documentary, which first aired in August 2022, 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. (Credits)

Podcast: A Year of War in Kharkiv, Ukraine

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. (Credits)

Interview collection: Putin and the Presidents

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. (Credits)

Putin’s War at Home (November 2022)

FRONTLINE told the stories of some of the 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. Putin’s War at Home also showed how independent journalists in Russia continue to seek the truth about the war — including the death toll among the country’s soldiers, information that Russia has deemed a state secret. (Credits)

Podcast: Putin’s Crackdown on Dissent Inside Russia

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

Part of FRONTLINE and The Associated Press’ 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 Putin and other Russian leaders to account. 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. (Credits)

Podcast: Uncovering a Pattern of ‘Strategic Violence’ by Russia in Ukraine

Putin’s Road to War (March 2022)

Including new interviews conducted in the days after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine began, this documentary 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 also drew on dozens of interviews FRONTLINE conducted about Putin’s rise to power over the course of several years. (Credits)

Interview collection: Putin’s Road to War