Marinka, Ukraine: https://x.com/MFA_Ukraine/status/1632380947734618113
A town of 10 000, completely destroyed, uninhabitable. Current population: 0. With scenes like these, threats of nuclear attack lose potency. Marinka looks indistinguishable from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Bakhmut and other frontline towns didn't fare any better. A group of scientists tracked the destruction with a synthetic aperture radar:
“After Hang processed the images and we saw the end result, it looked like a checkerboard or mesh,” Barbot said. “We asked, ‘Why is that?’ and we realized that it’s only the roads that survived. Everything else was collapsed, destroyed, evaporated, and the entire city is completely flattened.”
“You can see a neighborhood going away, and then another and then there’s no progress because of a natural obstacle like a river,” Barbot said. “After they’ve bombarded enough stuff, the front line begins to move to the west and the Russian army advances through the crumbles. Eventually the story repeats itself and after a year, there’s just nothing left. It looks like cancer spreading throughout the body.”