The Wasteland: Shocking New Images From Russian-Occupied Maryinka

A road that was once Maryinka’s Druzhby Avenue, photographed on December 4. The asphalt seal of the thoroughfare has been stripped from its soil base by shelling.
 

The same view of Druzhby Avenue photographed before its capture by Russian forces. Maryinka lay around 22 kilometers west of Donetsk and was once home to 10,000 people. 

The ruins of Maryinka’s Temple of the Kazan Icon Mother Of God, seen on December 4.

Since early 2014, Maryinka was on or near the front lines of what was then a conflict between Russia-backed fighters and Ukrainian forces.

The same Maryinka Church, photographed in August 2014. 

After Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, mass evacuations began and by March 2023 the city was completely uninhabited.

This bullet-chipped stump is what remains of a monument to Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko in the center of Maryinka.

The ruins of the eastern city were captured by Russian forces in December 2023. 

A Ukrainian soldier poses next to the Shevchenko monument in March 2022. 

The ruins of buildings in Maryinka photographed on December 4.

Ukrainian photographer Alena Grom visited Maryinka several times from 2017 onwards amid what was then a low-level conflict with Russia-backed forces. She told RFE/RL, "the town was small, so everyone knew each other, but locals were out and about only during the day." 

Administrative buildings in Maryinka photographed in August 2014. 

 After 4 p.m., Grom recalls, "people disappeared from the streets because shelling began in the evening."
 

A destroyed armored vehicle on a road in what remains of Maryinka, seen on December 4.

Grom says the city was unusually green and "was beautiful in the spring when the fruit trees blossomed." 

A convoy of Ukrainian armored vehicles on the outskirts of Maryinka in June 2015.  

A abandoned wasteland that was once a street corner of Maryinka. 

The December 4 photos in this gallery were taken by photographer Dmitry Yagodkin, working for TASS, the Russian state media outlet. 

A 2014 photo of an intersection in Maryinka. 

 

An upturned car on what was once a street in Maryinka, photographed on December 4. 

A Ukrainian serviceman checking documents at a checkpoint near Maryinka in August 2014.  

The ruins of a roadside business seen on December 4. 

Grom says during her many trips to photograph the city, she became close with some of the residents whom she describes as "tenderhearted, kind people who faced severe trials." 

A row of shops that now no longer exist, in Maryinka in August 2014. 

"I could never have imagined that Maryinka would soon not have a single resident, not a single surviving house," Grom says.