Kat Lonsdorf

The residents of Borodyanka are picking up the pieces after Russian forces withdrew and left behind a shattered town. Hundreds of people are still missing, presumed buried under rubble.

In the western Ukraine city of Ivano-Frankivsk, a bakery that closed for two weeks during Russia's invasion has resumed business, feeding the masses and providing refuge in wartime.

In Georgia, people living on the frontlines of Russia's 2008 invasion say they worry about what Putin's war in Ukraine will mean for them.

Thousands of Russians have left their country since their government began its invasion of Ukraine. Many have settled in Georgia, a country with a complicated history with its neighbor to the north.

When 22-year-old college student Vitaliy went to bed last night, he didn't think a Russian invasion of Ukraine would actually happen. Then he woke to the sounds of explosions.

Three decades ago, the newly independent country of Ukraine was briefly the third-largest nuclear power in the world. A lot has changed since then.

In the borderlands near Crimea, there is a war for the hearts and minds of Ukrainian citizens.

An underground world in the Ukraine capital is made up of Soviet-era bomb shelters, bunkers and basements. A potential Russian attack threatens to put the bygone shelter system to the test.

NPR travelled towards the "temporarily occupied territories" on the Ukraine-Russia border, where the people who live there are in limbo – cut off from both Ukraine and Russia, cut off from the world.

The standoff between Ukraine and Russia is about global security and an attempt to "rewrite rules on which the world is based," says Ukraine's foreign minister.