Ukraine war: Russia intensifies attack on Donetsk 

Russia’s forces have kept up a barrage of attacks along the front concentrated in two Ukrainian cities in the eastern Donetsk region.

Ukraine’s military said fighting was heaviest along the western approaches to Bakhmut, one of the two cities in the east, along with Avdiivka, that Russia’s military has been targeting.

Russian forces have been besieging Bakhmut for months in the longest battle in more than a year of war.

Russia’s defence ministry said its forces had destroyed a depot with 70,000 tonnes of fuel near Zaporizhzhia.

The forces had destroyed Ukrainian army warehouses storing missiles, ammunition and artillery in the regions of Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk, the ministry added.

“The enemy is trying to take our city-fortress at any cost,” Serhiy Cherevatyi, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s eastern military command, said on national television.

“Although it is extremely difficult, we are still in control of the situation. Our units are holding back the enemy and inflicting a maximum of damage.”

 Control of Bakhmut could allow Russia to directly target Ukrainian defensive lines in Chasiv Yar in the east, and open the way for its forces to advance on two bigger cities it has long coveted in the Donetsk region: Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.

Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said Russian forces controlled the centre of Bakhmut, with much of their actions now focusing on the city’s railway station.

“There is heavy fighting in the city centre and the enemy is gradually moving toward the western outskirts,” Zhdanov said.

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In a nightly weekend video address, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy denounced Russian air strikes coinciding with the observance of Orthodox Palm Sunday, saying Moscow was further isolating itself from the world.

“This is how the terrorist state marks Palm Sunday,” Zelenskiy said in his address. “This is how Russia places itself in even greater isolation from the world.”

He praised several units defending positions in the east and said he hoped Palm Sunday next year “will take place with peace and freedom for all our people”.

Ukraine’s State Emergencies Service said a 50-year-old man and his daughter, 11, were killed after Russian forces struck a residential building in Zaporizhzhia, in the southeast.

A woman identified as the wife and mother of the victims was pulled from under the rubble.

The majority of Ukraine’s 41 million people are Orthodox Christians who celebrate Easter a week from now.

Zainab Sa’id