Ukrainian officials say about two dozen civilians were killed and wounded as Russia continued its shelling of civilian-populated areas in the east and south of the country.
At least three civilians were killed and eight wounded in Russian shelling of Kostyantynivka, a city in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, presidential chief of staff Andriy Yermak said on social media on April 2.
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"Russians have carried out massive shelling of the town of Kostyantynivka," Yermak said on Telegram, adding that 16 apartment buildings, eight private houses, a kindergarten, and an administrative building had been damaged in the attacks.
Another civilian was killed and two others injured in Russian shelling of the Kherson region, the regional military administration said in a statement on April 2.
"The Russian Army attacked the residential quarters of Kherson six times. Shells hit private apartment buildings," the statement said.
The head of the Donetsk regional military administration, Pavlo Kyrylenko, also reported that at least 10 civilians had been wounded in Russian attacks in the region.
"On April 1, the Russians injured five residents of Donetsk region: three in Toretsk and two in Bakhmut.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on April 2 said in his nightly video address that the military situation in the Bakhmut area was "especially hot."
Serhiy Cherevatiy, a spokesman for the eastern military command, told Reuters on April 3 that Russian forces were "very far" from capturing Bakhmut and that fighting raged around the city administration building where the Wagner mercenary group claimed to have raised the Russian flag.
"Bakhmut is Ukrainian and they have not captured anything and are very far from doing that, to put it mildly," Cherevatiy said.
Meanwhile, the U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW), citing Russian, Ukrainian, and Western sources, said in its latest update that Moscow had "failed" in its winter offensive that was aimed at seizing all of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions by March 31.
And separately, Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, listed in a Facebook post a series of measures the Kyiv government could undertake when and if the country reclaims control of Crimea -- highlighted by the dismantling of the bridge that links the peninsula to Russia.