Shelling Kills 6 in Eastern Ukraine

Bombing eased across Ukraine after two nights of deadly barrages, but strikes near the front line killed six people and Russian troops pressed ahead in the east, closing in on the key city of Pokrovsk.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has called Moscow’s far-reaching bombing campaign this week one of the largest since the war began 30 months ago. Several people in the capital, Kyiv, said on Wednesday that they were pleased to have been given a respite after air-raid sirens and explosions shattered the pre-dawn calm on Monday and Tuesday.

The eastern region of Donetsk, which has seen some of the fiercest fighting this year, came under fire. A Russian attack killed four members of a family in the tiny community of Izmailivka, the state prosecutor’s office said on Facebook. The settlement is a few miles west of Russian lines and in the path of Moscow’s assault on Pokrovsk, a small city that is a vital transport hub for Ukrainian forces in the Donetsk region.

“The people died buried under the rubble,” the statement said. The regional military administration said that two other people were killed in another attack on a Ukrainian-held settlement close to the city of Bakhmut, which Russian forces captured more than a year ago after some of the most brutal combat since the full-scale invasion began.

The Donetsk region is one of two that make up the Donbas, and Russian forces have been pummeling it with daily barrages of missiles, drones and artillery fire. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has made controlling the whole of the Donbas a major aim.

The Ukrainian authorities have for months pressed civilians to evacuate as Russian forces advanced. But many people have stayed for reasons of poverty, ill health or attachment to their homes and farms.