Drone video shows cost of fierce fighting in east

MARINKA, Ukraine (AP) — A huge Russian tank turned around and took up position between the ruins of two destroyed apartment buildings, stopped and fired, a fireball and smoke erupted from the muzzle of its cannon.

Just 12 seconds later, he fired again, firing another round at his targets about 50 meters (yards) from what had once been a street—many years ago, before the fighting destroyed it.

While Friday marks the grim first anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, fighting between Russian-backed forces and Ukrainian troops has been raging in the country’s east since 2014.

The city of Maryinka is one of those that have turned into ruins. It is in the eastern part of the Donetsk region of Ukraine, where the territory is roughly divided between Russia and Ukraine. The front line runs through what’s left of the city, and that’s not much.

A new aerial drone video for the Associated Press shows how intense fighting since the February 24, 2022 invasion left no building intact in Marinka. Many of them are barely recognizable as buildings at all. Artillery fire also turned the city’s trees into matches – many of them tore their trunks apart.

Russian tank fire, filmed on February 19, added to the destruction, hitting what appeared to be Ukrainian positions amidst the rubble.

Marinka police chief Artem Shchus describes his town as “completely destroyed”.

In addition to the soldiers, the city was completely evacuated “because there is no way for the civilian population to live there,” he told AP in an interview.

Still, dozens of townspeople were killed and many wounded, he says.

Shchus believes that Russian forces are deliberately destroying the ruins, blowing up the walls that are still standing, in order to “destroy all shelters, 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 life.”

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AP video journalist Mstislav Chernov from Krasnogorovka, Ukraine.

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