On February 24th, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched an unprovoked, full scale military attack on Ukraine. Russia’s attacks on Ukraine are ongoing, and with the first anniversary of war approaching, we check-in with journalists we’ve spoken to throughout the conflict to reflect on the past year and look at the current state of the war. 

We spoke with Christopher Miller, Ukraine correspondent for the Financial Times and author of the forthcoming book about Ukraine, “The War Came To Us,” and Anton Troianovski, the Moscow bureau chief for The New York Times.

We also spoke with Ukrainians we’ve talked to throughout the conflict:

Last April, we spoke with Olena Shevchenko, Head of Insight Ukraine, an LGBTQ advocacy group based in Ukraine. Olena was in the Kyiv at the start of Russia’s invasion. She stayed for 14 days, partially sheltering in a basement, and then decided to move the Kyiv-based part of her organization to the western city of Lviv. They went back to Kyiv in June, and have hubs all around the country. Throughout the war, the organization continued advocacy work around LGBTQ issues, but they also ukraine.org/en/news/results-2022/">helped tens of thousands of people who were fleeing the country or who were internally displaced, by offering legal consultations, distributing humanitarian aid, and finding temporary shelter.

Last March, we spoke with Mariia Sirychenko, just a couple of weeks after the Russian Invasion. She was in Kyiv when the city was attacked and she left two days later, also to the safety of Lviv. Nearly a year later, she’s back in Kyiv. Mariia is from Mariupol, a city that was under siege for more than 80 days. And it's estimated that thousands of civilians were killed in the attacks, but exact numbers are difficult to verify. The city is currently under Russian control. When we last spoke to Mariia, she hadn’t been able to contact her grandmother in Mariupol for 10 days, but thankfully they found a way to rescue her.

We check-in with these voices on the ground in Ukraine about how life has changed for them and how they’re reflecting on this one-year mark of the war.