20 Days in Mariupol

➤Rated TV-PG
➤PBS

On Feb. 24, 2022, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine looming, a team of Associated Press reporters headed for the port city of Mariupol, knowing it would be a strategic target for Putin’s troops seeking to open a corridor to Russian-held Crimea. Getting into the Ukrainian city was easy, but leaving proved more difficult once the invasion was in full swing. Mstyslav Chernov and his team spent almost three weeks in Mariupol, documenting those early days of the war. The PBS Frontline documentary 20 Days in Mariupol takes Chernov’s footage and recounts his harrowing experience and the plight of a city under siege.

For much of the 20 days, the reporters use a hospital on the edge of the city as their base of operations. A steady stream of casualties arrives, and the doctors valiantly attempt to save those whom they can. But as the days tick by, the necessities of life, including food, medicine, and electricity, become scarce.

The unfolding devastation is painful to watch. Russian shells obliterate Ukrainian homes. Old women cry out in confusion and despair. Children die on hospital operating tables. Mass graves are filled with civilians. We follow the team’s desperate attempts to find internet access so they can send images and videos to their editors. What good are their efforts if no one outside Mariupol sees what’s happening?

These photos and videos provided the West with many of the indelible images from those early days of the war—the father crying over his dead teenage son, the pregnant woman carried away on a stretcher after Russian shells hit a maternity ward. 20 Days in Mariupol fills out the context of those stories and exposes the wickedness of Russian apologists who said the images were faked.