Burning buildings, gigantic plumes of smoke, craters in the ground, gutted churches and theaters… The extent of the destruction caused by the bombardments of the Russian army in several Ukrainian cities since the beginning of the offensive, on February 24, is such that it is visible from space. Using satellite images, produced in particular by the companies Planet and Maxar, franceinfo compared the photos of these war-stricken places before and after these destructive attacks.
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A devastated shopping center in kyiv
The war even in the Ukrainian capital. UA powerful Russian strike, presumably a missile strike, destroyed the huge Retroville shopping center in northwest kyiv, shaking the entire city late on Sunday evening March 20.
According to Moscow, the shopping center “inoperative” served as an armaments depot. “A battery of multiple rocket launchers and an ammunition storage base were destroyed with long-range precision weapons”said the Russian Ministry of Defense.
The explosion destroyed the windows of the entire neighborhood and damaged a dozen buildings. Debris, wrecked vehicles and twisted scrap metal littered the stage for hundreds of meters.
Destruction in Irpin, near the capital
Most of the inhabitants of Irpin, once a well-to-do suburb of kyiv, have fled the bombardments of the Russian army. Russian strikes continued to target many buildings in the city on Monday, March 21, especially near the railway tracks.
In this locality located northwest of the Ukrainian capital, the streets are strewn with rubble. Grad missiles gutted high-rise residential buildings as well as modest pavilions.
Shelling continues in Mariupol
In Mariupol, a large port city in the south of the country, besieged and bombarded for weeks by Russian forces, some 350,000 inhabitants remain stuck in ruins strewn with corpses, lacking everything.
Moscow had asked the defenders of the city on Sunday to “Throw down the weapons”, but Ukraine “cannot accept any ultimatum from Russia”, retorted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday. Mariupol, a strategic target for the Russian army, constitutes a land bridge between its forces in Crimea, in the south-west, and the territories it controls in the north and east.
An “absolute humanitarian disaster” in Chernihiv
In the north of the country, the mayor of Chernihiv, Vladislav Atroshenko, portrayed a “absolute humanitarian catastrophe” in his city. “There is no electricity, heating and water, the city’s infrastructure is completely destroyed”he said.
One of the symbols of these Russian bombardments in the city is in the middle of its Olympic stadium, where a gigantic crater was visible, on March 16.
A destroyed school and church in Volnovakha
Heavy fighting between pro-Russian separatists and the Ukrainian army partly destroyed the city of Volnovakha, pnear Mariupol, in the Donetsk region. Satellite images from Planet show the destruction of a school on March 14.
Other satellite images from the Maxar company show the destruction of a church and apartment buildings in a residential area of the city.