A series of extraordinary photos show the buildings of a Ukrainian town reduced to dust under the pounding onslaught of the Russian army.
Before the war, 10,000 people lived in Mariinka, a town in the suburbs of Donetsk, which has become one of the fiercest settings of the ongoing conflict.
Though Ukraine just passed one gruelling year since Russia's full-scale invasion at the end of February, combat between Russian- backed separatists and Ukrainian forces has raged in towns like Marinka since 2014.
It lies on the outskirts of Donetsk, where territory is roughly split between Russian and Ukrainian control.
The current front line runs through what is left of the town — which is very little.
New drone images shows how particularly intense fighting since the February 24, 2022 invasion has left no building in Marinka intact.
Many are barely recognisable as buildings at all. Shell-fire has also made matchsticks of the town’s trees — many of them ripped apart at the trunk.
Russian tank-fire, filmed Feb. 19, further added to the destruction, pounding what appeared to be Ukrainian positions amid the ruins.
Marinka's police chief, Artem Schus, describes his town as “completely destroyed.” Apart from soldiers, the town has been entirely evacuated “because there is no way for the civilian population to live there,” he said.
Still, dozens of townspeople have been killed and many wounded, he says.
Schus believes that Russian forces are deliberately razing the ruins, blasting walls that still stand, to “destroy all cover, regardless of whether it is a civilian shelter or a military facility.”
He adds: “They destroy everything because, with their tactics, they cannot defeat our troops, and resort to the destruction of all living things."
The largely static front line between Ukraine and Russia stretched over hundreds of miles, from the Black Sea in the south to Ukraine's northeastern border with Russia.
Another town, Vuhledar, has joined Mariinka as one of the deadliest hot spots.
Its ruins are more evidence of a grinding and destructive war of attrition, as well as a symbol of fierce Ukrainian resistance.
Despite the town being completely flattened, the residents remain, slowing the costly Russian offensive efforts to extend Moscow's control over the entirety of the Donbas.
In Bakhmut at the end of February, a soldier who allowed himself to be identified only by his war name, “Expert,” said the pulverized city in the Donbas' Donetsk region “has become a stronghold " for Ukraine.
“See what they have done to it?" he said of Russian forces that have been pounding Bakhmut for months, slowly inching forward with heavy casualties to capture a prize that, if it falls, might allow Moscow to argue that the invasion is making progress.
“And this is not the only city,” the soldier, who fights in a Ukrainian rapid response unit, added. "I wish they would break their teeth trying to chew it.”
