Europe Now brings you a special programme from Kyiv to mark the second anniversary of full-scale war in Ukraine. The fighting has killed and injured hundreds of thousands of people and left around a fifth of Ukrainian territory under Russian control, but this has not deterred Kyiv from seeking full membership of the European Union. In this first part of the show, we focus on Ukraine's reforms and its cultural heritage.

In December, Ukraine received a crucial signal from the EU, when the 27 member states agreed to start accession talks with Kyiv. And in February, a compromise was reached with Hungary to unblock a €50 billion financial support package for Ukraine. Throughout the war, and even before, the EU has been a crucial partner, providing at least €85 billion in aid to Ukraine.

In part one of this special programme, we visit Ukraine's premier innovation park, Unit City, where we meet Olha Stefanishyna, the country's deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration. She outlines the current state of play on Ukraine's EU reforms and tells us what she now expects from the European Commission in order to take things further.

We also tour the war-damaged Khanenko museum in Kyiv and discuss the impact of the war on Ukrainian culture with the country's most celebrated novelist, Andrey Kurkov. He describes how, despite the destruction of cultural heritage and all the horrors associated with that, the international visibility of Ukraine's culture has grown significantly.

In our motion design segment, Sophie Samaille recaps the various EU funding programmes that have been deployed in Ukraine.

Our reporter Luke Brown looks at EU-funded projects for Ukraine: from long-standing efforts to help "level up" Ukraine with EU Cohesion funds, to the more recent – and all the more urgent – efforts to help Ukraine rebuild homes and schools damaged by the Russian invasion, even as the war rages on.

Watch moreUkraine: A nation at war, yet firmly on the path to EU membership (part 2)

Show presented by Armen Georgian, produced by Johan Bodin, filmed on location by Johan Bodin and Stéphane Bodenne, with Luke Brown. Video editing: Gilles Terrie, Joël Procope, Aude Richelet. Editor-in-chief: Caroline de Camaret.

Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the DG Regional and Urban Policy. Neither the European Union nor the DG Regional and Urban Policy can be held responsible for them.