The Morning: What Ukraine lost

Plus, immigration, India's election and historic photographs.

View in browser|nytimes.com June 4, 2024 Good morning. Today, my colleagues Jeffrey Gettleman and Marco Hernandez help you understand the reality inside Ukraine. We're also covering immigration, India's election and photos that defined the modern age. —David Leonhardt. Source: Analysis by Jamon Van Den Hoek, Corey Scher and The New York Times | By Marco Hernandez Measuring what Ukraine lost By Jeffrey Gettleman Graphics by Marco Hernandez Imagine your hometown being wiped off the map. Imagine a city where no one lives. Imagine the landmarks in your life — where you went to school, where you were married, where you worked and played and loved and prayed — erased. This is what happened to Marinka, a small town in Ukraine's east with nearly 200 years of history. Photos of it look like those of Hiroshima. Its destruction has become a symbol of Ukraine's war. Destroyed buildings in Zavodskaya Street in Marinka. Photo by Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times It's hardly the only Ukrainian town like this. The Times worked with researchers to measure every town, street and building in Ukraine blown apart since the Russians invaded in 2022. In today's newsletter, we'll explain how we did it — and what we found. Source: Analysis by Jamon Van Den Hoek, Corey Scher and The New York Times | By Marco Hernandez Measuring a nation's destruction wasn't an easy thing to do. It was possible only by viewing Ukraine from space. Radar-equipped satellites took frequent images of the country during the war. Then, researchers from the City University of New York Graduate Center and Oregon State University analyzed years of data — more than 10,000 images of Ukraine in total — to track small changes in blocks or even discrete buildings. The project took more than a year. More buildings have been wrecked in Ukraine than if every building in Manhattan were leveled four times over. In some places, like Marinka, not a single resident is left. Pre-war Wikimedia via Ліонкінг; Serhii Nuzhnenko, Reuters; Gleb Garanich, Reuters; Leonid ХВ Ragozin via social media | By The New York Times Beyond the debris, what interested us most was the impact on people. So many Ukrainians have lost not just their homes but their entire communities. Marinka represents this loss. I walked its streets while it was under siege in July 2022. Not many people still lived there; I didn't see how any could. But I stepped into an apartment building and found, in light so dim that it was hard to see, a mom, her 13-year-old daughter and their cat sitting in a quiet, half-destroyed room. The front line between Russia and Ukraine was on their doorstep. Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times They eventually left, along with everyone else. The Russians took control of the city last year. But there wasn't much left. As one soldier put it, "Whatever could burn, burned." Our story, published today, visualizes the scope of Ukraine's annihilation. Sources: Jamon Van Den Hoek and Corey Scher (InSar data); OpenStreetMap (building street maps); Maxar Technologies via Google (satellite images from June 2023) | By Marco Hernandez For more Can Ukraine find new soldiers without decimating a whole generation? Volodymyr Zelensky has pressed the Biden administration to let Ukraine strike deep inside Russia with American-made weapons. So far, the White House has refused. ADVERTISEMENT THE LATEST NEWS Immigration Along the banks of the Rio Grande. Christopher Lee for The New York Times President Biden plans to sign an executive order today that would temporarily seal the southern border to most migrants. Donald Trump has promised mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. About half of Americans support his plan, polls suggest. 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