Tonight, FRONTLINE and The Associated Press go inside Russia's war on Ukraine and uncover harrowing evidence of potential war crimes.
Putin's Attack on Ukraine: Documenting War Crimes, a major special investigation, draws 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and prosecutors, top government officials and international war crimes experts; and a vast amount of previously unpublished evidence obtained and verified by the AP — including hundreds of hours of surveillance camera videos and thousands of audio recordings of intercepted phone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.
From award-winning director Tom Jennings, producer Annie Wong, AP global investigative reporter Erika Kinetz and her AP colleagues, the 90-minute documentary traces a pattern of atrocities committed by Russian troops in Ukraine, focusing on areas near Kyiv, such as Bucha, where some of the most shocking carnage was found.
FRONTLINE and the AP uncovered exclusive evidence that links possible war crimes in Bucha through the chain of command to one of Russia's top generals — evidence that prosecutors hope might help build a case against Russian President Vladimir Putin in court. But the joint investigation also explores the challenges of trying to hold Putin and other Russian leaders to account.
Putin's Attack on Ukraine: Documenting War Crimes premieres tonight at 10/9c on PBS stations (check your local listings). The documentary, which will also be available to stream online, is part of a larger editorial collaboration between FRONTLINE and AP that also includes War Crimes Watch Ukraine, a multiplatform initiative through which the two organizations have now gathered, verified and comprehensively catalogued more than 500 potential war crimes since Russia invaded Ukraine.
"We started this project simply to bear witness to the atrocities happening in Ukraine because it was hard to believe what we were seeing from our reporters, photographers and on social media," says Alison Fitzgerald Kodjak, AP's acting global investigations editor. "But it's now grown to encompass the question of whether there can be real justice in the wake of such horror and suffering."
"We hope our collaborative reporting efforts with the AP can expose the true toll of this brutal war and preserve this moment in history," says Raney Aronson-Rath, editor-in-chief and executive producer of FRONTLINE. "By verifying and documenting these possible war crimes, we aim to hold those in power accountable for the horrors unfolding in Ukraine."
