Ukrainian officials say there was sustained Russian shelling across the eastern Donetsk region on July 13 as Russian forces continue their push to capture of the Donbas.
In the adjacent Luhansk region, Ukrainian soldiers battled to retain control of two villages as they came under Russian shelling, said Serhiy Hayday, the governor of Luhansk.
The Russians are "deliberately turning Donbas into ashes, and there will be just no people left on the territories captured," Hayday said.
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Russian state news agency TASS quoted an official with the Russian-backed separatists, Vitaly Kiselyov, as saying Russian and proxy forces had entered the town of Soledar in Donetsk and could take it in a couple of days.
It was not possible to independently verify the claims of either side.
The city of Bakhmut faced heavy shelling as the current focus of Russia's offensive, said Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the Donetsk regional military administration.
Kyrylenko said Russian shelling also hit a granite factory in Slovyansk. There were no injuries, but the destruction was extensive, he said on Telegram, where he posted videos of the bombed factory.
Russia also struck 28 settlements in the Mykolayiv region bordering the Black Sea, killing at least five civilians, according to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of Ukraine's presidential office.
Russian missiles also struck the city of Zaporizhzhya, injuring 14 people at a factory. Law enforcement officers opened an investigation to determine whether the attack violated the laws of war.
In Kharkiv, regional Governor Oleh Synyehubov accused Russian forces of trying to "terrorize civilians" in the capital, Kharkiv, the country's second-largest city.
Russia, which says it does not target civilians, said it had shot down four Ukrainian military jets, an assertion the Ukrainian Air Force dismissed as propaganda.
The British Defense Ministry in its daily intelligence briefing early on July 13 said the Kremlin's troops were nearing the towns of Siverskiy and Dolyna, with the urban areas of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk "the principal objectives for this phase of operation."
British intelligence also said anti-Russian sentiment in the occupied parts of Ukraine had led to Russian and pro-Russian officials being targeted, noting that the Russian-appointed administration in Velykiy Burluk acknowledged one of its mayors was killed on July 11 in a car bombing.
The State Emergency Service of Donetsk region said the number of people confirmed killed in a rocket attack over the weekend on an apartment block in the city of Chasiv Yar in the region increased to 48.
Crews have been searching through the rubble since the rocket struck on July 9 and caused the five-story apartment block to collapse. Moscow claims it does not target civilians despite evidence to the contrary.
As battles raged in the east and south, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba ruled out ceding any territory to Russia should peace talks ever resume and he made clear that no such negotiations were taking place.
"The objective of Ukraine in this war...is to liberate our territories, to restore our territorial integrity and full sovereignty in the east and south of Ukraine," Kuleba told a briefing on July 13.
"This is the end point of our negotiating position."
Russia has taken control of wide swathes of Ukrainian territory in the south along the Black Sea coast and in the eastern Luhansk and Donetsk regions that make up the Donbas.
Russia in 2014 also captured and illegally annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and has backed separatists occupying parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions since that time.
In Luhansk, Andrei Marochko, an official for the Kremlin-backed separatist group that calls itself the Luhansk People's Republic, said the Ukrainian military had used U.S.-supplied high-mobility artillery rocket systems (HIMARS) to hit several settlements in the region.
This comes a day after Ukrainian forces hit what they said was an ammunition depot in the southern town of Nova Kakhovka, about 55 kilometers east of the key Black Sea port city of Kherson. Russian officials said civilian sites were hit in the attack.
The claims could not be independently verified.
The Ukrainian government has not commented on whether the newly acquired HIMARS were used in any attack.
The strike on Nova Kakhovka followed statements by the Ukrainian military that it was preparing a massive counterattack in the south to recapture territory while Russian forces were occupied with action in eastern regions.