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Civilians flee eastern Ukraine as Russia intensifies strikes — a report from a transit shelter
Even as U.S, President Donald Trump pushes for a peace deal with Vladimir Putin without a cease-fire, Russia is escalating its strikes on cities and towns in the Donetsk Oblast in eastern Ukraine, forcing thousands to flee.
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Healing with a shovel — archaeological excavations help soldiers and veterans recover
Service members and veterans are excavating the Trypillian culture, thereby reclaiming themselves. They are rehabilitating through archaeology near Lehedzyne in Cherkasy Oblast.
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In a central Ukrainian city, families fight to reclaim dignity for their fallen soldiers
Local authorities promised to bury every fallen defender at public expense, yet the mourners who trailed a cortege of three soldiers through town witnessed indignities money had not fixed. Widows and mothers were left convinced that the state’s help fell short.
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Racing against missiles and time, Ukrainian doctors deliver lifesaving heart transplants
An ambulance pulls away from Ukraine’s Heart Institute, a state-run facility in Kyiv, at 1 a.m. It speeds along at 150 kilometers per hour (93 miles per hour), occasionally turning on its sirens, as almost all the roads are empty. The destination: Korosten, a small town in the Zhytomyr region of northern Ukraine, approximately 90 miles (145 kilometers) west of Kyiv and near the border with Belarus. There, a deceased donor’s heart can save a seriously ill patient.
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Trees of life born from rubble: artist creates mosaics from glass shattered by Russian missiles
Artist Valentyna Huk decorates the streets of Kharkiv with mosaics she has created herself. Today, six patterns made from the debris of windows that did not withstand Russian shelling hang on the city's buildings. Valentyna spends several weeks of painstaking work on each one, starting with searching for pieces of glass in the ruins and ending with assembling them into unusual “puzzles.” The artist showed Frontliner how sharp shards become “loud” street art under her delicate fingers.
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Sky hunters. How anti-aircraft drones hunt enemy UAVs
Drones hunting enemy UAVs have become the latest twist in the battle of technologies. The war behind the controls and screens in a cozy dugout is somewhat reminiscent of a computer game, but the stakes are life itself. Frontliner visited the anti-drone drones of the 93rd Mechanized Brigade “Kholodny Yar” in the Donetsk direction and learned about the specifics of such hunting.
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“They beat me for speaking Ukrainian”: How an Azovstal defender survived three years of torture in Russian captivity
He survived the hell of Mariupol and several Russian prisons—and never broke. Oleksandr Savov, 33, was one of the last Ukrainian soldiers to surrender at the Azovstal steel plant — the vast industrial fortress in the besieged southern city of Mariupol— in May 2022. Three years later, on March 19, 2025, he stepped off a prisoner-exchange flight with broken ribs, missing teeth and a single thought: to hug his 12-year-old daughter.
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Andriy & Inna’s Frontline Diary
Frontliner Reporter Andriy Dubchak and his colleague Inna Varenytsia have traveled to the Donetsk region to document life in frontline towns and villages. They will visit Ukrainian military positions, speak with locals, and share photos and reports from their journey. Follow their diary on the Frontliner website.
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Surviving a double Tap: Rescuer Pavlo Petrov and the new norm of repeat strikes in Kyiv
During a recent mass missile-and-drone attack on Kyiv in the early hours of 6 June, a Russian kamikaze drone ignited a large fire in buildings on Vadym Hetman Street near Shuliavska metro station, a busy transit hub on the capital’s Red Line just west of the city center. As firefighters, rescuers and the DSNS press team worked the scene, a deliberate “double tap” drone strike — now a grim new norm in Kyiv — hit the same spot. With U.S. deliveries of air-defence munitions growing uncertain, such follow-on strikes threaten to become even more frequent and deadlier.
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Surgeries for Ukrainian service members that are changing global medicine
The maxillofacial surgery ward is crowded. Men in civilian clothes and uniforms cluster by the exam rooms, wearing dark glasses or eye bandages. Among them — Oleksandr, who needs an ocular prosthesis after being wounded. So does Andrii. Ivan’s eye survived, but a fragment damaged the muscle and now he cannot open his eyelid.
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Ghosts of the past – how the brain refuses to let go of lost limbs
Over 50,000 Ukrainians have lost limbs as a result of the war. Most of them experience phantom pain – physical sensations in parts of the body that are no longer there. In Ukraine, such pain is treated with augmented reality (AR) technologies, physiotherapy, and even psychedelic therapy. Frontliner explains how it works in this report.
