I Watched This Haven From War Turn Into a Besieged Wasteland

What is happening to the city of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine may look like just another blood bath in a long war — an obscure crossroads, now largely in ruins, being captured bit by bit by Russian forces.

It is a scenario I have seen play out over and over as I have photographed the war since the Kremlin’s invasion in 2022. I have witnessed the levels of attacks rise and swaths of the country fall into Russia’s hands. Nearly every thriving city, town and village I’ve visited near the front lines has been obliterated, become unreachable, or been occupied by Moscow’s forces.

Pokrovsk is now one of them. But like Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Vuhledar before it, Pokrovsk has its own story to tell, one that I have documented over several trips to the city and the area around it between the summer of 2023 and February of this year.

Russia has been fighting for more than a year to take the city, a gateway to potentially bigger prizes in the Donetsk region and territory to the west. Before then, Pokrovsk was a safe and welcoming pit stop for me and my team as we drove to photograph active frontline areas to the south or east.

A well-trafficked row of restaurants and cafes lined a street in the city center. A large outdoor speaker filled the air with rock and dance music. Across the road in an open market, older women sold produce from their gardens. Residents from other parts of the war-torn Donbas region fled to Pokrovsk as a haven from the fighting.

As time went by, however, Russia began to press toward Pokrovsk. I found myself photographing Ukrainian artillery units tirelessly fighting to slow their advance.

Inside the city, the telltale signs of imminent intrusion started to appear. Streets were filled with ominous arrays of concrete anti-tank fortifications known as “dragon’s teeth.”

With services deteriorating, civilians became reliant on food distribution and had to get water from collection points. When the Russians got closer late last year, I documented the evacuation of people unable to get out on their own.

Russia, as it has elsewhere in Ukraine, struck evacuees with drones. This indiscriminate killing of civilians in cars and on bicycles has come to be known in Ukraine as “human safaris.” Systematic attacks on humanitarian convoys have made aid delivery impossible.

A nearby mining town, Myrnohrad, is also part of this cauldron. Entire residential neighborhoods have been demolished, along with the lives once lived there. Volunteers braved drone attacks to distribute food and supplies to residents, who emerged from their basements to collect their share.

Some residents returned to retrieve a few belongings from their ravaged apartments, despite the drones hunting them in the streets. Olena, a woman in her 40s, wiped away tears as she got into a car loaded with a few items that had survived the bombing. “It was our home, it was …” she said between sobs.

A grandmother picked up her grandson’s toys, which had been lying in the street, thrown there by a blast that struck their building. A street vendor selling cold cuts recounted the deaths of two people in the lobby of the building next to her stall, pointing to the trail of blood across the street.

“Luckily, I set up my stall a little further away that day,” she said.

Myrnohrad is now nearly encircled by Russian forces — another shattered trophy for the Kremlin.