Russian Attacks ‘Escalate' In Battered Eastern Ukraine

As Zelensky visits Kharkiv in a rare trip outside capital Kyiv

- Rory Sullivan

Fighting has intensified in Ukraine's Luhansk region as Russian forces try to capture the largest city still under Ukrainian control in the territory, officials have said.

The Kremlin's forces have their sights on Sievierodonetsk, which is located around 145km (90 miles) from the Russian border on the strategically-important Siverskiy Donetsk river.

In recent weeks, the Kremlin's forces have pounded it with heavy artillery, with much of the city thought to lie in ruins.

"Some 90 per cent of buildings are damaged. More than two-thirds of the city's housing stock has been completely destroyed. There is no telecommunication. There is constant shelling," the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said.

"Capturing Sievierodonetsk is a fundamental task for the occupiers... We do all we can to hold this advance," he added.

The fighting in the city has grown fiercer, according to the region's governor Serhiy Gaidai, who described the Russian assaults as "extremely escalated".