Once thriving industrial centres, the Ukrainian towns of Bakhmut and Soledar now lie in ruins.
Bakhmut, formerly home to more than 70,000 people, is all but abandoned, the small number of civilians that remain taking shelter from constant bombardment.
Soledar, a smaller mining town about 10 kilometres to the north, is barely recognisable, its schools and businesses reduced to smoking rubble.
In peaceful times, Soledar was known for its massive underground salt mine, whose tunnels go on for more than 200 kilometres, stretching underneath the town itself and across the surrounding region.
The largest such mine in Europe, it served not just as an economic producer but as a tourist attraction, with guided tours costing visitors a few hundred dollars.
Sightseers could take in displays of mining equipment and view sculptures carved from salt, as well as visit the bar, accommodation, shops and even an underground chapel.
There's also a sanatorium, which made use of the environment's year-round cool temperature and constant air pressure to help treat lung conditions.
The largest and most well-known cavern is called Chamber 41, which at 135 metres long, 17 metres wide and 24 metres high hosted classical concerts and soccer matches before crowds of hundreds.
Today, salt production at the mine has ceased, and the caverns sit empty as fighting rages above.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says no wall in Soledar has been left standing, and the surrounding land is covered in Russian corpses.
Troops sent into a 'meat grinder'
Both Bakhmut and Soledar, situated in the eastern province of Donetsk, have been under constant Russian assault since the middle of last year.
Russian forces began shelling Bakhmut in May, and intense ground battles have taken place in and around the towns since August.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Kremlin-backed mercenary Wagner Group that is spearheading the assault, says Bakhmut is a "meat grinder" and his forces have at times fought for weeks to take a single house.
Earlier this week, Mr Prigozhin claimed his forces had seized control of Soledar in its entirety, a declaration echoed by the Russian government on Friday.
Ukraine continues to insist its troops are holding on, issuing a renewed appeal for weapons from the West and digging in to its defensive lines around Bakhmut.
Amid the relentless fighting, and the heavy casualties on both sides, something is missing — a strong rationale from either side as to why so much blood has been spilt over these two small, seemingly unremarkable towns.
On January 7, Mr Prigozhin offered one explanation.
Writing on the Telegram messaging app, he described Bakhmut as the "central point of the eastern front and a serious logistics centre", though he declined to elaborate on how controlling it would aid Russia's war effort.
Instead, he highlighted the region's mining tunnels.
"The cherry on the cake is the system of Soledar and Bakhmut mines, which is actually a network of underground cities," Mr Prigozhin wrote.
"It not only [can hold] a big group of people at a depth of 80-100 metres, but tanks and infantry fighting vehicles can also move about."
He added that stockpiles of weapons had been stored in the tunnels since early last century — implying they may well still be down there, available to be seized by Russian forces.
Tunnels of limited strategic relevance
The problem with Mr Prigozhin's statement, according to everyone from Ukrainians on the front line to Russian military bloggers, is that it appears to be based on little else than wishful thinking.
The existence of historical weapons in the caves is strongly disputed. And the caves themselves, while occasionally used by Ukrainian soldiers to conduct sneak attacks during the battle for Soledar, are of limited strategic value to any force that controls the entire region.
"The exits [to the tunnels] are well-known to the Ukrainians, so if the Russians did [attempt to hide vehicles in the tunnels] they could be easily targeted," said Ian Hill, a former New Zealand ambassador to Russia now teaching at Massey University's Centre for Defence and Security Studies.
"It seems to me the whole strategic value of Soledar itself is as a means of attack on Bakhmut, which is a slightly more significant town.
"[But] even the strategic value, in purely military terms, of Bakhmut I think is very debatable."
Charles Miller, a senior lecturer in the School of Politics and International Relations at the Australian National University, said neither Bakhmut nor Soledar provided any particularly strong strategic value for an advancing army.
"They're close to some road junctions, but it's unlikely if Russia were to capture them that it would be able to build up any great momentum," he said.
"There's no support from Russian forces in the area that would allow them to benefit from [taking control]."
Since coming under sustained attack, Ukraine has also dug in new defensive positions to the west of the towns, making it difficult for Russia to convert any potential success in Bakhmut and Soledar into a broader breakthrough.
Last month, Igor Girkin, a Russian nationalist and former Federal Security Service officer who helped wage the original Donbas war in 2014, said he thought his own side's strategy in Bakhmut was "idiotic".
"What will happen next [after the potential Russian capture of Bakhmut]?" Girkin mused in a video, suggesting the Ukrainians would merely fall back to their second defensive line while continuing to build other defensive lines behind that one.
"It's chewing through the enemy's defences according to the World War I model," he said.
Neither side will back down
What is most likely going on, Western analysts and intelligence agencies say, is that Russia is focused on securing a political victory in taking Bakhmut, rather than a purely military one.
Walking away from another months-long battle without a win after suffering such heavy losses would be a propaganda nightmare for Vladimir Putin, while a successful campaign would be Russia's most substantial territorial gain since August.
It would also bring it a step closer to full control of the largely Russian-speaking territory of Donetsk, one of four regions it claimed to have annexed in September.
"I think the political and symbolic importance [of taking Bakhmut and Soledar] outweighs any strategic military value," said Mr Hill.
"Even if the cities are razed to the ground, as we found with Mariupol, the propaganda value of their being in the hands of the Russian machine would be significant."
Similarly, Russia's obsession with taking the towns has made retaining them a key objective for Ukraine — less from a strategic perspective, but more from a symbolic one.
Mr Zelenskyy hand-delivered a flag signed by soldiers defending Bakhmut to the US Congress in December, and in recent days his government has taken to releasing pictures it said shows Russian soldiers strewn dead across muddy fields around Soledar.
"The whole land near Soledar is covered with the corpses of the occupiers and scars from the strikes," he said in a televised address earlier this week.
Dr Miller said Ukraine was investing such significant resources into defending the cities because it wants to avoid sending a signal to the West that the war could reach a stalemate.
"The thing that Ukraine really needs above all else is help from the outside," he said.
"In spite of the bravery of the Ukrainian forces, and the skill with which they've defended these cities, and Zelenskyy's leadership, there's no way they'd still be in the war without help from the outside world.
"[Other countries] have to think there's a good chance of success for Ukraine if they're going to provide weapons."
Political ambition, commercial interests
In addition to the towns' symbolic value, many Western analysts point to Mr Prigozhin's personal ambitions as a driving force behind the brutal nature of Russia's assault.
Despite mercenary groups, or private military companies (PMCs), being technically illegal in Russia, Mr Prigozhin has used his position as head of the Wagner Group to build up his own support base, aligning himself with powerful Russian governors and issuing non-stop criticism of the country's military establishment.
Some say he is positioning himself as a potential successor to Mr Putin — the man he was once known for serving food to.
"Prigozhin [sees himself as] a pretty credible alternative to Vladimir Putin as head of Russia," Dr Miller said.
"Obviously he has his own private army. He's been critical of the Russian war effort, he's been attending [soldiers'] funerals. He's much more visible on the front line. He wants to take over, but he can't make that too obvious."
Similarly, Mr Hill believed Mr Prigozhin was interested in Soledar's salt mines not for strategic purposes, but for his own commercial reasons.
Taking control of the mines would echo his actions in Syria, where the Wagner group seized oil and gas fields during its deployment, as well as the group's current operations across central Africa.
"The resources themselves are substantial. Before the war, the salt mine around Soledar … produced around 90 per cent of Ukraine's salt, and it's very pure-grade salt. There's also gypsum, which is used in construction materials," Mr Hill said.
"Whoever controlled [Bakhmut and Soledar] in the longer term would no doubt be pleased to have it."
ABC/Reuters
