KYIV: Ukraine reported “heated” fighting around its eastern city of Avdiivka on Saturday, saying Russian troops had “not stopped assaulting” the symbolic industrial hub for days in their quest to surround it.
Kyiv last week said that Russia had stepped up assaults on the frontline city, which lies just fifteen kilometres (9 miles) from Moscow-held Donetsk.
Avdiivka has been a symbol of Kyiv’s resistance since 2014 after it briefly fell to Russian-backed separatists.
Russian troops now control territory to the north, east, and south of Avdiivka.
Vitaliy Barabash, the head of the city, said on Ukrainian television that for the fifth day already, Russia has not stopped either assaulting or shelling positions around the city.
He said that Russian forces are trying to surround the city, claiming that Moscow was deploying more new troops to the area.
Barabash said that there is certainly no silence at all. Shooting battles continue, both from the south and north of the city.
Ukraine’s interior ministry said that Russian shelling had “destroyed” a 5-storey building in the city, saying it believed a man in his sixties was under the rubble but that it was impossible to retrieve the body.
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The ministry urged residents still in the city to evacuate.
Some 1,600 civilians are believed to be in Avdiivka, which had a pre-war population of 31,000.
President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that Ukraine was holding its ground in the city, but Russia claimed it had improved its positions there.
11-year-old boy killed in Russian attack
Kyiv also said Saturday that a Russian attack killed an eleven-year-old boy in the eastern village of Bagatyr, also in the Donetsk region, about eighty kilometres (fifty miles) west of Avdiivka.
Ukrainian police said in a statement that the boy turned 11 just two days ago.
It said his 31-year-old mother and younger brother were injured and shifted to hospital following the attack, which damaged around twenty homes, a church, and a school.
Russia’s intensified assault on the city has come after months of a Kyiv’s counter-offensive, which has been slower than expected.
Moscow meanwhile said it had “repelled enemy attacks” in many villages in eastern Ukraine, including in Andriivka — an eastern village that Kyiv has claimed it recaptured but Russia says it controls.
