My Maryinka: Photographer Recalls 'Former Town' Of Ukraine

Photographer Alena Grom remembers a town that thrived in the shadow of a war that would soon destroy it.

This aerial photo of war-ruined Maryinka in eastern Ukraine was one of several images that stunned the world when they were shared across social media in early March.

For Ukrainian photographer Alena Grom, seeing the apocalyptic images was a deeply personal shock.

From 2017 onward, the eastern Ukrainian native had made frequent trips to document Maryinka as locals endured a simmering conflict with Russian-backed separatists entrenched nearby.

Despite the years of fighting on the outskirts of Maryinka, Grom says "life was flourishing there. People fell in love, got married, raised children, and made plans for the future."

"Maryinka was a very green town," Grom recalls. "There were flowers in the city that grew on municipal flowerbeds near people's houses."

“It was beautiful in the spring when the fruit trees blossomed,” Grom says of the now-destroyed city.

Even long before the 2022 invasion, however, Ukraine’s conflict with Kremlin-backed fighters impacted everyday life. In April 2014 the city was captured by pro-Russian paramilitaries before being retaken by Ukrainian forces five months later.

With pro-Kremlin separatists entrenched a few kilometers outside the city, Maryinka locals lived with the rumble of artillery and the frequent arrival of shells for eight years before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine was launched in February 2022.

Grom says central Maryinka was a bustling place, but only during certain hours.

"The town was small, so everyone knew each other, but locals were out and about only during the day…. After 4 p.m., people disappeared from the streets because shelling began in the evening," the photographer remembers.

Grom once visited a home close to Ukrainian military positions and was speaking to the family inside when explosions boomed nearby. "I jumped and asked the father, 'Don't you hide during shelling? Aren't you afraid?'"

The Maryinka local explained that the family dog, after once being wounded by shrapnel, served as their barometer for danger. Somehow the dog was able to detect the direction of incoming artillery from the boom of the distant guns.

"When shells are fired toward our house, the dog runs to hide -- that's when we head for the basement," the father of two told the photographer.

In 2017, Grom interviewed a single mother who was pregnant with her third child.

"When I asked her eldest son what he dreams of, he told me he'd never seen the sea," Grom says. "When I got home, I thought about how I might make the child happy. I bought a large inflatable pool and posted it to the family."

But the gift was damaged shortly after being inflated when a piece of shrapnel tore through the pool.

Through a Telegram group set up by residents of Maryinka, Grom followed the distressing communication as the town was being battered into rubble in early 2022.

Due to the ferocity of the fighting, many Maryinka residents who waited too long were unable to be evacuated before the tide of the Russian invasion flowed into the city.

Some locals took shelter in basements that later became tombs.

"Due to the collapse of apartments, people were buried under the debris of their own homes," Grom says. "Sometimes wounded old men asked for help and called their relatives from under the rubble. It was awful."

"Some of the local residents became my friends," Grom says, describing them as "tenderhearted, kind people who faced severe trials. I could never have imagined that Maryinka would soon not have a single resident, not a single surviving house."

Text by Amos Chapple, based on reporting by Alena Grom.