the town of Marinka, wiped off the map and a symbol of the destructive violence of the conflict

It is a landscape of desolation, almost lunar. Absolute devastation, synonymous with nothingness. For several days now, the town of Marïnka – or what remains of it – has become the symbol of the latest destruction by the Russian army in Ukraine. First broadcast on Telegram, then shared on Twitter on Saturday March 4, the images of this village of 10,000 inhabitants wiped off the map were authenticated on Sunday by the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry.

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Of this Ukrainian city, located in the middle of the front line in the Donetsk region, there is nothing left. She was “completely destroyed”in the words of police chief Artem Schus, quoted by the AP news agency (in English). The immensity of the damage is striking and seems straight out of an apocalyptic film while “tens” deaths have been recorded, again according to the police chief.

Since 2014, Marinka had already been the scene of clashes between the kyiv army and pro-Russian paramilitary organizations. But the fighting has been daily there for several months, while Russian troops seek to take the city in a vice, as in Bakhmout, a little further north, reports Le Figaro.

While the conflict turned into a war of position and attrition during the winter, the reality is different in Marinka, reported an AFP report on January 24. There were many street fights there. THE Colonel Yaroslav Tchepourny, in charge of relations with the media, thus confided to the French press agency that it was in this village that his brigade suffered “most losses” since the start of the invasion.

The intensity of the fighting did not leave “no building” intact, reports the AP agency in its report. A video shared on TikTok by videographer Andrii Kobryn shows the extent of the damage from the ground. In addition to the ruins of houses, we see on the image of the trees destroyed by the intensity of the strikes of the belligerents. Marïnka ended up being completely evacuated “because it is impossible for civilians to live here”according to the police chief.

The extent of the destruction also shows the reconstruction effort that Ukraine will have to provide once the war is over. IChief of Staff of the Ukrainian Presidency, Andriy Yermak, appeals in a message posted on Telegram (in Ukrainian), “in court” And “reparations” for the destruction of “Marinka and other Ukrainian cities”. The cost of reconstruction is already occupying the Ukrainian authorities. According to several estimates, it could reach 700 billion dollars.