Russia has bombed Volnovakha, a city in the east of Ukraine, to the point it ‘no longer exists’, according to a regional governor.
The small city, located in the breakaway Donetsk People’s Republic region, has been ravaged by Russian artillery attacks and bombing raids, leaving more than 90% of the city’s buildings either damaged or completely destroyed.
Donetsk governor Pavlo Kyrylenko told Direct on 12th March, a day after Russian forces claimed to have taken control of the city, that:
‘In general, Volnovakha with it’s infrastructure as such no longer exists,’
Local MP Dmytro Lubinets said:
‘in the city there is not any building which has not suffered from direct or collateral damage. so many buildings have major destruction, some minor destruction, some are completely destroyed to the ground,’
Most of the cities 21,000 residents have long since fled. It appears that most will have nothing much to return to.
The amount of civilian casualties in the city remains unclear, but as reported by The Guardian, the devastation is so extreme that bodies have been left uncollected on the streets and those who remain are trapped in basements under constant shelling and cut off from access to food, water and electricity.
Volnavakha, north of Mariupol, has also come under encirclement from Russian soldiers. Many attempts to create humanitarian corridors from both of these cities have been attempted to the region of Zaporizhzhia.
All attempts of evacuation by the Ukrainian administration have failed due to attacks from Russian troops.
