Wastelands: The Ukrainian Settlements Wiped Out By Invasion

An undated photo of Bakhmut, in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region. 

Before the 2022 Russian invasion, the city was home to around 70,000 people.

Bakhmut seen in June 2023, shortly after its ruins were captured by Russian forces.

A central square in Maryinka in August 2014, when the town in the Donetsk region was home to several thousand people. 

 

A destroyed suburb of Maryinka in May 2023.

By the time Maryinka was captured by Russian forces in December 2024, Ukraine's top General Valeriy Zaluzhniy said the town "no longer exists."

A welcome stele in Vuhledar, Donetsk region, seen in an undated photograph. 

The coal-mining town was home to around 14,000 people before the 2022 invasion. 

A distant aerial view of Vuhledar in February 2023. The town has been largely destroyed by shelling but remains in Ukrainian control as of January 2024. 

Houses in Pryvillya, a town of some 6,500 people in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine.

This photo was taken in April 2022 when Pryvillya was a frontline but largely undamaged settlement. 

The remains of a suburb of Pryvillya photographed in June 2022, the same month Russian forces claimed to have captured the town. 

An Orthodox church in the village of Bohorodychne, Donetsk region, photographed in 2009. 

 

The ruins of Bohorodychne photographed in December 2022 after being lost then recaptured by Ukrainian forces multiple times that year. 

The center of Mariupol, a city in the Donetsk region that was once home to around 420,000 people, photographed in 2019. 

The same Mariupol intersection photographed in April 2022 after the city's capture.