The death toll from a Russian rocket attack that hit an apartment block in eastern Ukraine over the weekend has risen to 30, while a Russian bombardment has killed at least three in the second largest city Kharkiv.
Brick by brick, rescuers have picked through a huge mound of rubble that remained of a collapsed five-storey block struck late on Saturday in the city of Chasiv Yar in Donetsk province.
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukrainian president's office, said rescuers had cleared 65% of the rubble, weighing around 170 tonnes, by late this afternoon.
Russia's Defence Ministry has said "high-precision ground-based weapons ... have destroyed the temporary deployment point" of a Ukrainian territorial defence unit in Chasiv Yar.
The civilian deaths have driven home the human cost of Russia's invasion of Ukraine - now in its fifth month. European capitals are braced for more economic consequences, with supplies of Russian gas in question and sanctions on Moscow disrupting trade.
Today's artillery, multiple rocket launcher and tank attack on Kharkiv, further north, injured 31 people including two children, in addition to the three deaths, regional governor Oleh Synehubov said. At least one strike hit a residential building in the city, Reuters images show.
The attack on Chasiv Yar in Donetsk province was part of Russia's push to capture all of the industrial Donbas region in the east, partly controlled by separatist proxies since 2014, after declaring victory in Luhansk province earlier this month.
Military experts say Russia is using artillery barrages to pave the way for a renewed push for territory by ground forces. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who says he aims to hand control of Donbas to the separatists, today eased rules for Ukrainians to acquire Russian citizenship.
Kharkiv, in the northeast close to the Russian border but outside the Donbas, suffered heavy bombardment in the first few months of the war followed by a period of relative calm that has been shattered by renewed shelling in recent weeks.
Moscow denies targeting civilians but many Ukrainian cities, towns and villages have been left in ruins. Since the 24 February invasion, attacks on a theatre, shopping centre and railway station have caused many civilian deaths.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had carried out 34 air strikes since Saturday, while his chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said Moscow should be designated as a state sponsor of terrorism over the apartment bombing.
The war has exposed diplomatic fault lines across Europe and sent energy and food prices soaring. Applying a further phase of European Union sanctions against Russia, Lithuania today expanded restrictions on trade through its territory to Russia's Baltic coast exclave of Kaliningrad.
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Europe's dependence on Russian energy was preoccupying policymakers and the business world as the biggest pipeline carrying Russian gas to Germany began 10 days of annual maintenance. Governments, markets and companies are worried the shutdown might be extended because of the war.
Mr Putin calls the conflict, Europe's biggest since World War Two, a "special military operation" to demilitarise neighbouring Ukraine and rid it of dangerous nationalists. Ukraine and its Western allies say Putin's war is an imperial-style land grab.
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Ukraine's general staff has said that Russia had launched a wave of bombardments as they seek to seize Donetsk, the other province in the Donbas, after taking Luhansk.
It said the widespread shelling amounted to preparations for an intensification of hostilities.
The US-based Institute for the Study of War said Russian troops were regrouping and that the heavy artillery fire was intended to set conditions for future ground advances by identifying Ukrainian weaknesses.
Russia's defence ministry said its missiles struck ammunition depots in Ukraine's central Dnipro region used to supply rocket launchers and artillery weapons.
Reuters was unable to independently verify the battlefield reports.
Ukraine is preparing a counterattack in the south of the country where Russia seized territory early in the war.
Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk warned civilians in the Russian-occupied Kherson region in the south on Sunday to urgently evacuate. She gave no time frame for action.
"I know for sure that there should not be women and children there, and that they should not become human shields," she said on national television.
Ukrainian forces have recaptured the village of Ivanivka in the Kherson region, a Ukrainian infantry brigade said.
