UKRAINIAN OFFICIALS HAVE reported intense combat, characterised by relentless assaults by Russian forces, as the ongoing attack on the eastern city of Avdiivka entered its fifth consecutive day.

City head Vitalii Barabash said “the enemy has not stopped either assaulting or shelling positions” around Avdiivka.

Barabash also reported that Moscow was deploying additional forces to encircle the strategically important city in the eastern Donetsk region, situated just north of the Moscow-held regional capital, also called Donetsk.

Around 1,600 civilians remain within the city, a stark contrast to its pre-war population of about 31,000.

Barabash’s comments came after Russia’s UN ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, told a UN Security Council meeting on Friday that the intensified attacks in the east amounted to a new stage in Moscow’s campaign in Ukraine.

“Russian troops have, for several days now, switched over to active combat action practically throughout the entire front line… The so-called Ukrainian counter-offensive can therefore be considered finished,” he said.

But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said earlier this week that Ukrainian forces were keeping Russian troops at bay and “holding our ground”.

Further north, fighting along the northern stretch of Ukraine’s eastern front has “significantly worsened” in recent days, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of Ukraine’s land forces, wrote on Facebook on Saturday.

Gen Syrskyi, who visited troops in the area, said that Russian forces had regrouped following losses and were mounting attacks around the village of Makiivka and pushing towards the city of Kupiansk, with the goal of encircling Kupiansk and reaching the Oskil River.

Also on Saturday, a 60-year-old woman was killed in Russian shelling of the city of Beryslav in Ukraine’s partly occupied Kherson region.

In Russia, the country’s Defence Ministry said air defence systems shot down two Ukrainian drones over the Black Sea near the southern resort city Sochi on Saturday morning.

Ukrainian officials have never acknowledged responsibility for attacks on Russian territory.