salt mines

Surrounded by sunflower fields and salt mines, Bakhmut was long known for a sparkling-wine plant where millions of bottles aged underground in gypsum caves.

Drone footage captured by The Times shows the once-peaceful city, known for its salt mines and sparkling wine, reduced to ashes.

Two weeks earlier, Prigozhin posted a photo of him and his fighters in what he said was one of Soledar's salt mines.

Once a city of about 70,000 people in the Donetsk region, known for its sparkling wine and salt mines, Bakhmut has become emblematic of the savagery of this war.

Bakhmut, once a city of 80,000 known for its sparkling wine and salt mines, has been the site of some of the deadliest urban combat in a generation.