Just writing something about North Korean soldiers' pay and remembered the time Kim Jong Un decorated one of his banquets with a scale model of the Hwasong-18 nuke

Russia never romped far past Bakhmut. Today — some 18 months later — Ukraine's soldiers still defend the hilltop town of Chasiv Yar, according to open-source repository DeepState Maps, Ukraine's soldiers still defend Chasiv Yar.

It didn’t always look like this. Bakhmut was Ukraine’s “city of wine and roses” — a community of 70,000 that had seen its share of Putin’s proxy war in 2014, but loved its culture and quiet life.

This sign into the city reads: "Bakhmut, a place for kindness."

By way of introduction here: Last year, my colleagues and I set out to try and capture the closest record we could of Ukraine's gruelling defence of Bakhmut.

Here's how the city looked after Russia passed through.