Alina starts watching one of the latest videos of Maryinka circulating online but turns it off immediately. She can’t. Staring at the stumps of once-green chestnuts along the city’s avenue, charred swings, and endless piles of concrete ruins—it physically hurts. It’s like looking death in the eye.
She knew every bush, every street here. Every five-story building and school her father once built. Now, they’re unrecognizable.
“My father, Volodymyr Ivanovych Matsion, was an honored builder of Ukraine. And I know he’s turning in his grave because everything he made is destroyed,” Alina says.
Maryinka suffered from the first days of the Anti-Terrorist Operation, when the war wasn’t yet called a war. Just 30 kilometers southwest of Donetsk, the front line and Donetsk itself were visible from nearly every window.
The front-line town shuddered from Grad rockets in July 2014, fierce battles in summer 2015, and on—right up to the 2022 invasion. Yet locals still planted flowers by their homes despite it all.
For eight years, Maryinka, home to nearly 10,000 people, was a gateway and final barrier to occupied Donbas. Until the Russian army “denazified” it for good, capturing it as lifeless ruins. The first photos of an apocalyptic, utterly demolished Maryinka surfaced in March 2023.
For some, a horrific image. For Alina, a living nightmare. Her native places now exist only as map markers and linger in memories. Memories are, in essence, the only way left to visit a city wiped from Ukraine’s face by Russians.
Marнinka 2018-2024: before and after the arrival of the Russiansphotos from open sources
“Maryinka's Mother”
Alina Kosse is a well-known volunteer in Maryinka. She knew all the journalists, helped with brigade contacts, and offered coffee. Someone was always staying over.
“My house was like a convention palace,” she laughs.
In 2015, American journalist Christopher Miller dubbed her “Maryinka’s Mother.” The nickname stuck—everyone called her that. Though it nearly cost her life later.
She walked to work. The trip took 40 recitations of the “Our Father.” She’d stride quickly down Kashtanova Street to the intersection, cross at the light, pass School No. 2—built by her father—then head past the tax office, up through the park to the church. To the left, in the city center on Shevchenka Street, was her district center for children’s and youth creativity. She ran it for 23 years—a third of her life.
“In all those years, there wasn’t a single day I didn’t want to go to work. My best memories are with the kids. They were so talented—winning first place in the region for knitting toys, beaded necklaces, embroidery…
“And the performances we put on! Ask anyone from Maryinka: we always packed the auditorium and the square. I saw the eyes of happy kids. They always sang with heart and soul.”
“…My Maryinka, my steppe land, autumn fields like a loaf of bread…”
Maryinka sits on the Osykova River. Founded in the 18th century by settlers from Slobozhanshchyna and Poltava regions—mostly peasant farmers—they brought their traditions, rituals, and songs. As a village, Maryinka emerged in the 1840s.
It gained city status in 1977, having endured World War I, Russification, collectivization, the Holodomor, the Great Terror, World War II, and famine again. Despite migrations and waves of hundreds of thousands of Russian workers to Donbas, Maryinka somehow preserved its Ukrainian identity then. Industrialization didn’t change much either. These lands stayed agricultural by tradition.
In the Maryinka people remember, industry included a dairy plant, a tire repair factory, and a food processing plant that made grains and flour. Though the center had typical Soviet architecture, authenticity shone through in the old private homes—each unique, adorned with wooden carvings, well-kept.
“DPR,” Korolevska, and Banderite
Russians first occupied Maryinka in 2014. Battles raged—control flipped back and forth. Ukraine’s Armed Forces finally liberated it on August 5, 2014. Despite proximity to the front and regular shelling, the city adapted over time, living a front-line life still distant from most Ukrainians’ reality.
Ukrainian flag over Maryinka. August 12, 2014Wikipedia
But a century of Russification left its mark. Alina struggles to say it, but admits: her pro-Ukrainian stance wasn’t widely shared. She’d even say she was in the minority.
It was really hard to work. In 2014, the head of our district education department came to me and said, “Take down that rag [Ukrainian flag—ed.], I’m with the ‘DPR’.” I told her, “And I’m still with Ukraine.” I wanted to strangle her.Alina Kosse, volunteer, director of the Maryinka District Center for Children and Youth Creativity
Ukrainian soldiers near the Maryinka district police station. August 2014Maryinka City Military Administration
She remembers the evening of July 14, 2014, like it was yesterday. She was canning cucumbers and plums. Around 9:30 PM, heavy shelling started. Grad rockets flew toward Maryinka—visible through the window. Power went out. Then gas. Everything boomed and exploded around. It quieted only by morning. She left with her mom and sister for Slovyansk, where her sister had an apartment—though its windows were blown out too.
At first, Alina lived between two cities. But after her home was robbed twice by locals, she returned.
“I had 10 chickens, and two dogs. I had to do something. Then I met the 28th Brigade and started helping them. Mom gave her whole pension to the guys. When they arrived, they had nothing. We helped with socks, anything we could buy in Slovyansk. I brought it to Maryinka.”
Then everyone got used to it somehow. Most who left came back. Shells flew, windows got blown out… and we’d replace them. We had faith. That it’d end soon. That we’d tough it out and it’d be over.Alina Kosse, volunteer, director of the Maryinka District Center for Children and Youth Creativity
Alina recalls how, in 2016, former pro-Russian Party of Regions MP Natalia Korolevska visited Maryinka’s administration, holding a “Women for Peace” meeting. Alina disrupted it.
“I said, ‘Raise your hand if you didn’t go to the referendum.’ Me and one girl raised ours. Everyone else sat there, noses buried. Korolevska yelled at me, ‘Banderite!’ But they slinked off eventually.”
Her office and home were targeted. She’s sure locals tipped off the enemy. She says a hostile sniper fired at her house twice.
“It was 2016. The fight felt like it was right on the street. I came back from the kitchen walking on glass—I didn’t even feel it. Next morning, I open the bedroom door and see a bullet stuck in the open door across from me. The military-civil administration head came, looked, and said, ‘That was aimed—a sniper rifle.’
And just after we fixed that window—I was heading to my room but went to change in the opposite one. Then: boom, bam, bam. I open the room, and it’s the same scene.
“How does the Lord steer you away from things like that?..”
According to the 2001 census, over 70% of Maryinka residents listed Ukrainian as their native language.
Maryinka’s Ukrainian essence struck historian and ethnologist Olena Boriak when she found an archival file, “Ethnographic Description of Maryinka Village, Stalino Oblast”—records by Donetsk Pedagogical School students from 1927 to 1929.
“If you take family rituals, for instance, the recorded words were entirely Ukrainian. In those materials, taken from respondents, there’s no Russian. People sang Ukrainian songs, held Ukrainian rites. Even Sich Riflemen songs were documented,” Boriak noted.
As of January 1, 2014, Maryinka had 9,829 residents. As of January 1, 2023—zero.
Residential building in MaryinkaMaryinka City Military-Civil Administration
Enough flowers for everyone
Alina is an artist. Born and raised in Donetsk, she worked at a culture workers’ house. She moved to Maryinka with two grown sons in the late ’90s and grew attached. When it all crumbled there, everything inside her did too.
Because of what happened, I’ve got serious health issues. Now the war’s inside me. I’ve got nothing left to lose but my life. Everything’s gone.Alina Kosse, volunteer, director of the Maryinka District Center for Children and Youth Creativity
Asked “What’s Maryinka to you?” she answers without hesitation: “Maryinka’s my blooming pearl.”
“Any favorite spots?”
“Yes. My job and my garden. I had a whole rose park. And a little plot: 20 cucumbers, 30 tomatoes… but it grew! I’d give some to the soldiers—pickles, jams, all sorts.”
In summer, Maryinka’s streets sagged with apricots—you could pluck them from trees. Any neighbor would let you pick mulberries.
“[Potential] grooms yanked flowers from near the doorstep,” Alina laughs. “Flowers enough for everyone…”
Kids in Maryinka were fed, happy. Always so… stylish. Donetsk was close. There was this market near Donetsk—‘Trudovskie’—where Maryinka folks traded. Women went shopping at ‘Barabashovo’ in Kharkiv, buying the trendiest stuff. Parents always had money. Saying Maryinka had no cash—that’s nonsense.Alina Kosse, volunteer, director of the Maryinka District Center for Children and Youth Creativity
“Pack your belongings. You’re leaving for good”
On February 17, 2022, shelling intensified around Maryinka. That’s when the city’s countdown began.
On February 20, photojournalist Max Levin was at Alina’s home. They’d been friends since 2015.
“We had lunch, and sat at the table. Afterward, he looks at me and says:
‘You know you shouldn’t be here.’
‘What are you saying, it’ll be fine,’ I reply.
‘Alina, I’m begging you: leave.’”
I look in his eyes, and he’s crying. I’ll never forget those eyes. He’s my guardian angel. The next day, I told my younger sister, ‘Pack your belongings, you’re leaving for good.’Alina Kosse, volunteer, director of the Maryinka District Center for Children and Youth Creativity
She took her sister to Lviv. Max worried about how they made it. Then he stopped replying to her messages.
Ruins of MaryinkaFacebook / Ground Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
He died in March on Kyiv Oblast’s front amid heavy fighting. It later emerged that Russian troops had executed him.
Alina, at her children’s urging, left the country. She asks people to remember Maryinka as it was: “blooming, beautiful, talented, with happy kids.” But she harbors no illusions about rebuilding.
“It lives in me, and that’s forever. But I’m a realist: Maryinka won’t be rebuilt. Why kid myself with hope? Going back to the ashes of my memories and dreams…”