Russian forces carried out relentless attacks on Bakhmut on Wednesday, trying to encircle the small eastern Ukrainian city and claim their first major prize for more than half a year after some of the bloodiest fighting of the war.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy accused Moscow of throwing waves of men into battle in Bakhmut with no regard for their lives. The leader of Russia's Wagner mercenary group said the Ukrainians were putting up "furious resistance" trying to hold the city at all costs.
Russia also said it had repelled a massive drone attack on Crimea, the peninsula its forces seized and claimed to annex in 2014. That came a day after Moscow accused Kyiv of launching a series of drone strikes on targets in Russia itself.
Reuters was able to reach Bakhmut from the west on Monday, proof that the city was not yet surrounded despite Russian forces pressing from north and south to close the last routes in.
Flames and smoke rose into the sky from blazing buildings. Constant gunfire and explosions rang out into the sky. Ukrainian armoured vehicles roared through the streets, while stray dogs wandered amid the mud and debris.
Thousands of residents remain inside the ruined city from a pre-war population of around 70,000.
"It is frightening indeed," said a middle-aged man bundled in a coat and woolly hat on the steps of his apartment block.
"I can hardly move my legs - they barely move - from the stress of the situation," he said. "As long as my home is intact, and I am not hurt, I will stay here."
In the town of Chasiv Yar to the west, a grocery shop was ablaze.
"We won't give up Bakhmut. We will hold on to it until the very last," a 25-year-old army medic headed towards the front told Reuters. "Glory to Ukraine, death to the enemies."
The area around Bakhmut has been the one part of the front where Moscow has made substantial gains during a winter offensive that has seen what both sides describe as the bloodiest fighting of the war.
"Russia in general takes no account of people and sends them in constant waves against our positions, the intensity of the fighting is only increasing," Zelenskiy said in an overnight address, describing the fighting in Bakhmut as "most difficult" but its defence as essential.
In an audio message on social media, Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose Wagner private army has led Russia's offensive there, said the Ukrainian military was throwing extra reserves into the battle, "trying to hold the town with all their strength".
"Tens of thousands of Ukrainian army fighters are putting up furious resistance. The bloodiness of the battles is growing by the day," he said.
After losing extensive territory in the second half of 2022, Russian forces have been replenished by hundreds of thousands of reservists. Kyiv, for its part, has stuck mainly to defence over the past three months, hoping Russia's assault will exhaust Moscow's forces before Ukraine launches a counter-attack with new weapons promised by the West.
Fighting near Bakhmut has been led by Wagner, which has recruited tens of thousands of convicts from prisons. Its boss Prigozhin has accused the regular Russian army brass of treason for inadequately supplying his men.
Wagner received an apparent show of Kremlin support on Wednesday when Russia's rubber-stamp lower house of parliament, the State Duma, discussed extending censorship laws to include a 15-year jail sentence for those who discredit "volunteer formations".
"This initiative will protect everyone who today is risking their lives to ensure the security of the country and our citizens," Duma chairman Vyacheslav Volodin wrote on social media. "The punishment for violators will be severe."
Ukrainians and Russians traditionally view March 1 as the start of spring. Already, frozen ground has melted at the front, bringing the season of sucking black mud - "bezdorizhzhia" in Ukrainian, "rasputitsa" in Russian - notorious in military history for destroying attacking armies in the region.
Ukrainians boasted that arrival of warmer weather proved Russia had failed to freeze them into submission with missile and drone attacks on energy infrastructure.
"So, did you manage to freeze us? Happy first day of Ukrainian spring!" tweeted Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine's National Security Council.
The war loomed over a meeting of foreign ministers from the G20 group of big economies in New Delhi, attended by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as well as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Host India does not want Ukraine to dominate the event, but faces calls from Western countries for a clear stance.
"This war has to be condemned," Josep Borrell, the European Union's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, told reporters. "I hope, I am sure that India's diplomatic capacity will be used in order to make Russia understand that this war has to finish."
Kyiv describes the Russian invasion as an unprovoked war of aggression to crush an independent state. Moscow blames the West for provoking what it calls its "special military operation", and for prolonging it by supporting Kyiv with weapons.
"We intend to firmly and openly talk about the reasons and instigators of the current serious problems in world politics and the global economy," the Russian Embassy in New Delhi said in a statement ahead of the G20 meeting.
