Kyiv warned Friday that a key frontline town has come under "constant fire" from advancing Russian forces as Moscow announced that it had captured another village in eastern Ukraine.
Buoyed by their advantage in manpower and arms, Russian forces are on the offensive, and the Ukrainian town of Chasiv Yar in the Donetsk region appears to be their next major target.
"The town has become even more dangerous," the head of the Chasiv Yar military administration, Sergiy Chaus, told AFP on Friday during an interview in the nearby city of Kramatorsk.
"If before there were moments when you could hear silence in the town, now there is no silence... There is constant fire," he said.
Both Ukrainian and Russian military bloggers with links to the armed forces said on Friday that Russian troops had reached the outskirts of the town.
Chaus declined to comment on those reports. He said there were around 770 people still living there.
"There is not a single building left intact," he added.
Chasiv Yar is an important logistics hub for Kyiv's forces and sits a few kilometers west of Bakhmut, which was flattened by months of artillery fire before it was captured by Russia last May.
Russia has recently secured its first territorial gains since seizing Bakhmut and is now trying to press onwards against Ukrainian units hobbled by delays in the supply of vital Western military aid.
