Russia unleashed ground forces, airstrikes and artillery as it pressed ahead with a grinding offensive designed to complete its capture of eastern Ukraine on Tuesday, but Kyiv said its troops were putting up fierce resistance and holding the line.
Heavy fighting was reported on Tuesday in front line towns near the eastern city of Donetsk, where Ukrainian officials said Russian troops were launching waves of attacks as they tried to seize control of the industrialized Donbass region.
"The situation in the region is tense – shelling is constant throughout the front line ... The enemy is also using air strikes a great deal," Pavlo Kyrylenko, governor of the Donetsk region, one of two that makes up Donbass, told Ukrainian television.
"The enemy is having no success. Donetsk region is holding."
The Ukrainian military said it had repelled ground assaults in the direction of the cities of Bakhmut and Avdiivka and had wiped out Russian reconnaissance units, including near Bakhmut.
Russia gave a different assessment. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov claimed his forces had captured a factory for Moscow on the edge of the eastern town of Soledar, other Russian-backed forces said they were in the process of "clearing out" the heavily fortified village of Pisky, and Russian media reported that a group of mercenaries from the Wagner Group had dug in near the city of Bakhmut.
Some of the places Russia is targeting like Pisky are heavily fortified settlements crisscrossed with tunnels and trenches where Ukrainian forces have long been dug in.
Reuters could not verify either side's battlefield accounts.
British military intelligence, which is helping Ukraine, said that Russia's push toward the city of Bakhmut had been its most successful operation in the Donbass in the last 30 days but said it had still only managed to advance around 10 kilometers (6 miles). It said Russian forces in other areas had not gained more than 3 kilometers over the same period.
Russia, as part of what it calls its "special military operation," has said it plans to seize full control of Donbass on behalf of pro-Kremlin separatist forces, while Russian-installed officials in parts of southern Ukraine have said they plan to press ahead with referendums to join Russia.
Ukraine, which says Russia is prosecuting an unprovoked imperial-style war of aggression, is banking on sophisticated Western-supplied rocket and artillery systems to degrade Russian supply lines and logistics.
Kyiv, which has made modest progress in recent weeks taking back some settlements in places, is also getting Western help when it comes to intelligence, training and logistics, and hopes it can launch a wider counter-offensive in southern Ukraine to dislodge Moscow's forces.
Apparently spooked by that risk, Russia has moved to bolster its forces in the south and, according to Britain, focused on reinforcing its defenses there over the weekend.
Neither side has revealed the number of dead or wounded, but both are believed to have suffered heavy losses.
U.S. Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl on Monday said Russia had suffered between 70,000 and 80,000 casualties, either killed or wounded, since Russian President Vladimir Putin sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24.
Stepping up its financial aid and military spending on Ukraine, Washington announced it would send $4.5 billion in budgetary support and $1 billion in weapons, including long-range rocket munitions and armored medical transport vehicles.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an interview with The Washington Post that he wanted the West to impose a blanket ban on all Russians, including those that had fled Russia since Feb. 24, and for them to "live in their own world until they change their philosophy."
"Whichever kind of Russian ... make them go to Russia,” Zelenskyy was quoted as saying.
"They’ll understand then,” he said. "They'll say, 'This (war) has nothing to do with us. The whole population can't be held responsible, can it?' It can."
The Kremlin dismissed Zelenskyy's call for a ban as irrational, saying that Europe would ultimately have to decide if it wanted to pay the bills for his "whims."
"The irrationality of thinking in this case is off the charts," Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters. "This can only be viewed extremely negatively. Any attempt to isolate Russians or Russia is a process that has no prospects," Peskov added.
On Tuesday, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said it was "time to end tourism from Russia."
"Stop issuing tourist visas to Russians. Visiting Europe is a privilege, not a human right," she tweeted.
In Paris, Russian nationals can no longer visit the Chateau de Vincennes, a major tourist attraction.
Meanwhile, tensions remained high around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest of its kind in Europe, after both sides accused each other over the weekend of endangering it with reckless military action.
The plant, which is staffed by Ukrainians, has been under the control of Russia since March. Moscow has militarized it to prevent Ukrainian forces from retaking it.
Russia's RIA news agency cited a Russian-backed separatist official on Tuesday as saying anti-aircraft defenses around the plant would be strengthened.
United Nations chief Antonio Guterres on Monday called any attack on a nuclear plant "suicidal" and demanded U.N. nuclear inspectors be given access.
