Ukrainian defenders fought desperately to withstand a major Russian offensive in the region of Donetsk, with the enemy laying down heavy artillery fire to pave the way for ground forces to advance, a senior Ukrainian official said on Wednesday.
After Russian troops took control of Lysychansk, the last bastion of Ukrainian resistance in Luhansk, Ukraine s military braced for an attack on Donetsk, with the cities of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk both in the Russian line of fire.
Donetsk and Luhansk comprise the Donbas, the industrialized eastern part of Ukraine that has seen the biggest battle in Europe for generations.
There was heavy fighting at the edge of the Luhansk region, its governor Serhiy Haidai told Ukrainian television that Russian regular army and reserve forces had been sent there in an attempt to cross the Siverskiy Donets River.
Haidai earlier said Russian forces were engaged in widespread shelling as they launched their assault on Donetsk.
Russia wants to wrest control of the entire Donbas from Ukraine on behalf of Moscow-backed separatists in two self-proclaimed republics.
On Tuesday, Russian forces struck a market and a residential area in Slovyansk, killing at least two people and injuring seven, local officials said.
A reporter at the scene saw yellow smoke billowing from an auto supply shop, and flames engulfing rows of market stalls as firefighters tried to extinguish the blaze.
Pavlo Kyrylenko, regional governor of Donetsk, said Slovyansk and nearby Kramatorsk had suffered heavy shelling overnight. There is no safe place without shelling in the Donetsk region.