Aerial images reveal scale of destruction in Ukrainian city

Daily Mail​

5 days ago

Shocking aerial images show how the Ukrainian city of Chasiv Yar has been reduced to a mangled hellscape by Russia's war machine. Chasiv Yar is a city in Donetsk, part of the Donbas region of Ukraine. For the last 15 months, Russia has waged a long running battle on the fortified eastern city.
It is a key target for the Russians as it sits on higher ground, offering potential control for a wider area. Its capture would also give Russia more options to attack Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk region to the west, which is not one of the areas that Moscow has claimed but where it says it has already established a small foothold. Constant bombardment by Russian shells have left the city looking like a skeleton of its former glory.
Apartment buildings have been turned to rubble and ruin, with collapsed roofs, smashed windows and blocked roads. In July 2022, the city was struck by missile strikes, which killed 48 people, including a nine-year-old boy, according to authorities. Many locals fled and the city's population quickly shrunk from around 12,000 to nearly 700, according to Kyiv Independent.
Last year, all remaining children were evacuated and only those unwilling or unable to leave remained in the city. Those who remained have faced dire conditions with access to water, gas and power cut off and constant shelling by the Russian army. In April, it was revealed that around 80 per cent of apartment buildings had already been critically damaged.
The Russian army is currently pushing to capture the city of Pokrovsk, with more than 100,000 soldiers advancing in the area. Pokrovsk is a road and rail hub in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, which had a pre-war population of some 60,000 people. Most people have now fled, all children have been evacuated and, according to Serhii Dobriak, the head of the city's military administration, less than 1,500 residents remain.
Moscow says it has annexed Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region and controls over 70 per cent of the area's territory. Capturing Pokrovsk, dubbed 'the gateway to Donetsk' by Russian media, and Kostiantynivka to its northeast, which Russian forces are also trying to envelop, would give Moscow a platform to drive north towards the two biggest remaining Ukrainian-controlled cities in Donetsk - Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. It lies on a key road which has been used by the Ukrainian military to supply other embattled eastern outposts, including Chasiv Yar.
Control of Pokrovsk would allow Moscow to further disrupt Ukrainian supply lines along the eastern front and boost its long-running campaign to capture Chasiv Yar. Last year Russian forces were seen using flamethrower bombs on the buildings in Chasiv Yar as it continued to bring the town to ruin. The bombs disperse an aerosol cloud of fuel, which ignites, producing a massive explosion with a high-temperature blast wave.
Shocking footage showed entire multi-storey buildings in the city being 'wiped off the face of the earth' alongside Ukrainian soldiers, according to a Russian special forces Telegram channel. Ukraine's top military commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi - who said in May that Ukraine had stalled the long grinding Russian offensive on Pokrovsk and even pushed back in some areas - said on Friday that his forces were standing firm.
Ukrainian officials say Russia has relentlessly pounded their forces with artillery, glide bombs, and drones and sent in small groups of fighters to try to gain ground rather than commit large groups of infantry or armored vehicles. Russia has 111,000 soldiers in the Pokrovsk area, Syrskyi has estimated.