Russian and Ukrainian forces are fighting fierce battles around the eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka after Russia launched one of its biggest military offensives in months.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian forces were holding their ground on the third day of battle but municipal officials said the Russian attacks were relentless.
Ukraine says Russia has redirected many soldiers and large amounts of equipment to the Avdiivka area, showing it can hit back over four months into a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the east and south that has encountered stiff Russian resistance.
"Avdiivka. We are holding our ground. It is Ukrainian courage and unity that will determine how this war will end," Zelenskiy wrote on the Telegram messaging app alongside photos of Ukrainian troops and of Avdiivka's entrance sign.
Ukrainian Special Operations Forces said its troops had "foiled the plans of the crazed enemy, repelled all attacks and held their positions".
Vitaliy Barabash, head of the city military administration, told Ukrainian television: "The enemy does not stop storming, they come from all directions."
Avdiivka is home to a big coking plant in the southwest of the Donetsk region and lies just northwest of the Russian-held city of Donetsk.
It has become a symbol of resistance, holding out against Russian troops who invaded Ukraine in February 2022, and helping ensure Russia has been unable to gain full control of the region even though it says it has annexed it.
Ukrainian forces had been defending Avdiivka since long before last year's full-scale invasion, holding the line against Russian-backed militants who took control of territory in east Ukraine in 2014 after Russian forces seized Crimea.
About 1600 residents out of a pre-war population of 32,000 remain in Avdiivka but constant shelling rules out an organised evacuation, Barabash said.
The attack on Avdiivka is one of the few big offensives Russia has launched in months as its troops focus on holding back Ukraine's counteroffensive, which has made slow progress through vast Russian minefields and heavily fortified trenches.
Russia's Defence Ministry said its forces had inflicted damage on Ukrainian forces in areas including Avdiivka but gave few details.
Oleksandr Shtupun, a spokesman for Ukraine's southern group of forces, said Russia saw Avdiivka as an opportunity to win a significant victory and "turn the tide of fighting".
"Today the capture or encirclement of Avdiivka is probably the most it can achieve at this stage," he said.
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a US non-profit research group and think-tank, said geolocated footage showed Russia had advanced in some villages southwest and northwest of Avdiivka this week.
But encircling Avdiivka was likely to require more forces than Russia has committed to its offensive, it said.
Andriy Yermak, the head of the president's office, said Russia's attacks appeared designed to draw Ukrainian soldiers from fighting on other fronts although he did not mention Avdiivka specifically.
Russia has also intensified air strikes on Danube River ports in the southern Odesa region in recent weeks, attacking Ukraine's main route for food exports since Russia quit a deal allowing shipments via the Black Sea in July.
In the latest overnight attacks, a military spokeswoman said a grain storage facility had been hit in the Odesa region.
She said some grain had been damaged but did not say how much.
Russia said a four-year-old girl was among three people killed in a Ukrainian drone attack on a village in Russia's southern Belgorod region which left her father in a coma and her mother seriously injured.
Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of Belgorod region, said debris from the drone had destroyed one house and that three bodies - of a man, a woman and a child - had been recovered from under the rubble.
