“I want to tell you a story. A story thousands of years old. A story of men fighting for their land.” So reflects the award-winning documentary maker and AP journalist, Mstyslav Chernov, in opening his 2025 documentary, “2000 Meters to Andriivka.”
Just over four years ago, the Russian tanks rolled over the border into Ukraine in the middle of the night on February 24, 2022, kicking off the worst conflict in Europe since WWII. From the beginning, this war has been characterized by unspeakable atrocities inflicted on civilians in various villages, towns, and cities that Russia captured. The streets of Bucha, strewn with corpses of savagely murdered civilians, horrified the world when documented early in the war. In his memoir, I Will Show You How It Was, the Kyiv Independent journalist-turned-soldier Illia Ponomarenko describes this difficult first year of war. Like other Ukrainians, Ponomarenko could easily see satellite footage of Russian tanks moving inexorably close to the border in the months and weeks leading up to the beginning of the invasion. And yet, it still surprised many when it finally began in earnest.
Russia had expected—and was expected by many other foreign powers—to end the war quickly by simply decapitating the Ukrainian regime in Kyiv. But the resistance proved much stronger than anyone expected. And some of the areas that it did capture, Ukraine then worked hard to recapture in the 2023 counteroffensive, the subject of “2000 Meters to Andriivka.” When the war broke out, Chernov reflects, he picked up his camera, eager to make sure that the world knew what was going on. But other men—like Fedya and others he is shadowing during this documentary—picked up their guns instead.
One of the cities Ukraine sought to recapture in the 2023 counteroffensive was Bakhmut, located in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, which remained under Ukrainian control despite Russia’s pseudo-war in the Donbas region that began in 2014 until its capture in 2022. Road networks are important, though, and the most straightforward route to Bakhmut lies through the village of Andriivka, meaning its recapture was a priority during the 2023 counteroffensive.
The military group Chernov accompanies on this mission must traverse the final 2,000 meters to reach Andriivka and retake it. But what would be a leisurely twenty-five-minute walk in peaceful conditions takes months in this case. The terrain includes a road—mined and impassable—and a forest pockmarked by missiles that offers some protection, but could scarcely be called safe, as enemy drones hover overhead. “It’s like landing on a planet where everything is trying to kill you,” Chernov reflects before reminding his audiences soberly that this is no foreign planet but a once ordinary forest. How could this happen in Europe, and in the twenty-first century? The question hangs in the air, unanswered.
The documentary follows the men in action amidst the near-constant shooting, shelling, explosions, and fighting over every hard-won meter. Gradually the narrative moves from 2,000 meters away from Andriivka, then 1,000, then 600, then 300, then 100, before finally those who have survived the fighting so far arrive in the village proper. The final 100 meters, Chernov remarks, are the most horrific to traverse: bodies are everywhere, mostly Russian, but plenty of Ukrainian as well.
The military mission succeeds at last: the Ukrainian soldiers and Chernov arrive in Andriivka. And yet, their success is shockingly anticlimactic and unsatisfying. The entire village has been destroyed without a single living thing remaining, save for a scurrying mouse and an emaciated cat that the soldiers find and delightedly keep with them after. Finally, they hang a Ukrainian flag from one of the destroyed buildings and move on.
The anticlimactic nature of the mission’s success raises uncomfortable questions, though, for Chernov no less than the men. “What if this war is until the end of our lives?” one asks. In 2023, it may have been easier to strike an optimistic chord, but in 2026, the plight of Ukraine is like a ship sailing endlessly into the night, hoping to find land, but unsure if it will make it or sink along the way. What does this sort of liberation of an occupied village even mean, the documentary prompts us to ask, if there is no one left alive in this village—and in so many other villages and cities all around Ukraine? This used to be a village named Andriivka, reflects Chernov. Now all that is left of it is the name.
Towards the end of the documentary, we take a detour from Andriivka, as aerial shots of Ukrainian cities glide before our eyes—city after city, their modern high-rise apartment buildings eerily mutilated as though in a violent game of Legos, top floors gone from some, open wounds down the middle in others, no one anywhere to be seen.
There is such futility to war—and especially this war, Chernov suggests. Indeed, the final notes at the end of the documentary state that the 2023 counteroffensive had failed. Yes, Ukraine regained some ground, including Andriivka, but Russia then just as promptly retook them. By 2025, Russia controlled 20% of Ukrainian territory. What was the point of spending these long months, at such high cost of life, to capture this village of rubble—on the way to a city of rubble?
And yet, each of these ghost cities and villages of rubble were once, just four years ago, vibrant centers of life, their homes filled with families living out their lives before being tragically forced to leave. I was privileged to watch the screening of this documentary on the campus of the small midwestern university where I work. It was an event organized by students, and mostly students were in the audience. Indeed, several of them were from Ukraine. “I haven’t been home in four years,” one of them remarked. “I miss my home,” another student told me.
But there is no home left for anyone to come back to in villages like Andriivka. And yet, hope remains for now. In his book about the work of Ukrainian evangelical churches during the war, Serving God Under Siege, pastor and seminary professor Valentyn Syniy tells a different story, one that falls outside the purview of typical war documentaries. It is a story of God’s people serving not only each other but their traumatized, weeping neighbors all around. And it is a story of community that still remains rooted in Ukraine and persists. But for how much longer? For however just Ukraine’s cause was in 2022 and remains today, “2000 Meters to Andriivka” and Serving God Under Siege remind us that, in war, the scale of human suffering means that no side can truly be called a victor, particularly in a conflict as senseless as Putin’s invasion. This side of the veil of tears, only the dead have seen the end of the war.
