New York Times editors wrote this about our coverage of the war in Ukraine:

There are rare instances where reporters push the boundaries of conventional reporting, transcending genres and delivering groundbreaking work that leaves an indelible impact. Yousur Al-Hlou and Masha Froliak’s multifaceted reporting combined documentary, investigative and news journalism. It relied on relentless sourcing, shoe leather war reporting, visual forensics techniques, online sleuthing and data journalism. Together, they unraveled the truth, exposed war crimes and captured the attention of millions worldwide. In 2022, they published close to two dozen stories covering the impacts of the Russian invasion. Their exceptional journalism focused on the human toll of the conflict and revealed atrocities committed by Russian soldiers. And while many of their stories were produced and edited with the help of colleagues in New York, their tireless efforts in Ukraine led the reporting. Together, they spent almost six months there, covering the war from multiple front lines, developing key sources under extremely difficult conditions.

Their work includes: an investigative documentary naming the Russian unit and commander behind potential war crimes; video vignettes capturing the perilous task of defending a frontline, and the stifling fear of citizens under attack bunkering underground; an audio interactive built upon the intercepted phone calls of Russian soldiers who, in their own words, describe battlefield conditions and startling admissions of criminality; an investigative essay detailing the failures and devastating impact of President Putin’s war; and a harrowing visual interactive which for the first time named and retraced the final steps of dozens of civilians killed along one street in Bucha.

In January 2022, they traveled to the strategic port city of Mariupol to document how the city was preparing for an invasion. They filmed the Ukrainian Army training civilian volunteers through a newly formed Territorial Defense Force. And they investigated how Ukrainian paramilitary groups coordinated with the country’s military to strengthen their defense capabilities

In February, when Russia began attacking Ukrainian cities by land, sea, and air, they braved daily airstrikes and shelling to document the immediate aftermath of the war — from humanitarian suffering to civilians taking up arms to defend their country. They went to the front lines of Zaporizhzhia to speak to communities under fire and shadowed medical units evacuating residents from the outskirts of Kyiv. They joined soldiers in a makeshift bunker in a shopping mall in the capital, and as millions of Ukrainians began fleeing their homes, they spoke with displaced families moving west in search of safety.

In Bucha, they assumed the role of de facto war crimes investigators, immersing themselves in the traumatized community, and — over eight months — collected troves of evidence necessary to piece together how atrocities were committed in the town and who was responsible. They visited mass graves and interviewed witnesses who described seeing residents being tortured or gunned down, and left to die in the streets. They trawled through Telegram channels laden with photographs of missing persons and recovered bodies to identify victims more comprehensively than overwhelmed authorities. They petitioned close to 50 Ukrainian officials for documents, recordings, and cellphone data, which ultimately enabled them to expose the Russian soldiers and unit responsible for potential crimes against humanity.

They obtained footage that showed soldiers in the act of killing — marching victims to their death, firing on civilians who posed no threat and interrogating men before executing them. The footage ricocheted around the world and was reused in documentaries by the BBC and PBS Frontline. By bringing these gruesome acts to light, they challenged the narratives propagated by those seeking to downplay or deny the atrocities.

Yousur and Masha collected and cross-referenced vast amounts of online data from phone logs to online profiles across multiple messaging apps and Russian social media accounts, collecting a mosaic of evidence that ultimately unmasked the perpetrators of the Bucha killings. They additionally pored over intercepted phone calls, military documents, and exclusive video footage, weaving together a watertight account of what happened.

Their investigation identified the 234th Guards Air Assault Regiment as the unit that killed dozens along Yablunska Street. To prove that the killers were in the 234th, they matched military vehicles seen in Bucha to archival images of the 234th at training exercises and preparing to invade Ukraine in February. They obtained military call signs of the commanders, and in hundreds of hours of CCTV filmed along Yablunska Street, repeatedly heard the top commanders of the 234th. They obtained a database of phone calls made from Bucha to Russia and traced the calls that Russian soldiers made home using the cellphones of their victims.

Their relentless pursuit of truth led them to identify 22 members of the regiment who used the victims’ phones to call their loved ones back home in Russia just hours after civilians were executed. Their meticulous reporting left no doubt about the involvement of high-ranking commanders and provided a framework for future accountability and potential war crimes prosecution.

A former U.S. diplomat told us that the evidence revealed “the kind of incident that could become a strong case for war crimes prosecution.” An investigator at the prosecutor’s office of the International Criminal Court lauded the “incredible investigative work” and told a member of the team that “you could go straight into the courtroom with that kind of presentation of the facts.” The head of the U.N.’s Independent Commission of Inquiry to Ukraine, who liaises with the I.C.C., contacted our team after the investigations were published. A former director of Physicians for Human Rights, now working with the U.N. commission, said “this work will be extraordinarily useful to [the Commission] and the I.C.C.”

Their coverage of the war in Ukraine relied on a mix of traditional field reporting, verité cinematography and open-source visual investigations. It conveyed the urgency of the conflict to a global audience and reached millions of readers. Their findings were covered in dozens of international news outlets and almost every Ukrainian outlet. It has brought readers and viewers into the trenches, documenting the human experience of the war with sensitivity and depth.

Impact:

The front-page stories reached many millions of readers on the New York Times site and paper, leading coverage the days they were published. The work reached millions more through Times social media, interviews reporters gave to the press and presentations at universities and festivals.

The stories reverberated globally, and the findings — and visual evidence of war crimes — were reported upon or republished by hundreds of newsrooms. The investigations were covered worldwide in multiple languages in over 400 news articles.