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Photo report by KHPG from Dobropillya, which unexpectedly became a frontline city.

In the mid-19th century, 8 important trade and shipping routes passed through Orikhiv. Now, the place is on the path of Russian invaders.

Since the end of October, the city of Kurakhove and the community around it have been the hottest spot in the Donetsk direction.

The evacuation of Pokrovsk and Mirnohrad residents has been going on for two months.

The Pokrovsk direction remains one of Donbas’s hottest spots of military operations.

If necessary, Ukrainian civil society is quick to respond.

In a city bombarded daily by the Russians, the emotions of churchgoers are bittersweet.

The village of Kantsedalivka in the Kharkiv Region was liberated last fall. Then, the volunteers who were the first to get to the village saw a terrible picture: ruins, burnt cars, charred bodies.

Since the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war, Pervomaiske was constantly shelled. The village had no light for over a year: the occupiers severely damaged the power grid.

175 kilograms of TNT, 68 anti-tank mines — the Russians left behind an incredible amount of explosives in a border village in the Kharkiv Region.

The Derhachi Region at the border was among the first to be attacked by the Russians. About half the community was occupied. At the same time, the village of Shapovalivka found itself in the gray zone.

In the Kharkiv Region, two villages are just 10 minutes away from each other: Dibrivne and Kurulka. One was occupied by the Russians and heavily mined, and the other was destroyed.

As a result of constant enemy shelling, not one house has survived undamaged in Pytomnyk, a small village in the Kharkiv Region.

Lisne has been one of the hotspots of the war in the Kharkiv Region. Ukraine’s armed forces halted the Russian advance four kilometres away. For the next six months Lisne was surrounded by the invaders.

The destruction in Mala Danylivka. From 1941 to 1943 the town, 20 kms from the Russian border, was occupied by the Germans. In February 2022, Mala Danylivka was almost occupied again, this time by invading Russian forces.

Lying 12 kms northwest of Kharkiv, the town of Derhachi was never occupied by the invading forces. From the first days of Russia’s full-scale war, however, the town was constantly shelled during the battle for Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city.

Borshchova (403: 2001) is a small village, 15 kms north of Kharkiv. It was attacked during the very first hours of the Russian invasion last year.

Lyptsi village (pop. 4,500, 2021) is a village in the Kharkiv Region. It is located five kms from the border with Russia, and 34 kms from Kharkiv.

The village Tyshky appeared on the bank of the Kharkiv River in the 1650s. Later it divided in two, called Cherkaski and Ruski Tyshky. Both suffered substantial damage last year.

Oskil, a village in the suburbs of Izium, is one of the oldest settlements in the Kharkiv Region. It existed in the early seventeenth century under the name Tsareborysov.

Tsyrkuny is a village near Kharkiv, which the Russians occupied on the first day of the war. Tsyrkuny was a launch pad for the shelling of Kharkiv.

Since mid-2022, KHPG researchers have been taking photos, from the ground and from drones, of the damage and destruction wreaked by the war throughout the Kharkiv Region. The following photos illustrate what remained of Izium after it was liberated.

Documenters from the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group are filming the destroyed Kharkiv region using cameras from the ground and on drones. In this collection are photos of Ruski Tyshky after de-occupation.

Kamianka is a village in the Kharkiv Region located 10 kilometers from Izium. With the first days of a full-scale war, it was in the zone of fierce fighting.