A woman cries next to the body of her father lying on the ground after a Russian attack in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Monday, April 18, 2022. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana) 
Firefighters work to extinguish a fire after an airstrike hit a tire shop in Lviv, Ukraine, Monday, April 18, 2022. Russian missiles hit the city of Lviv in western Ukraine on Monday, killing at least six people, Ukrainian officials said, as Moscow’s troops stepped up strikes on infrastructure in preparation for an all-out assault on the east. (AP Photo/Mykola Tys) 
An interior ministry sapper collects unexploded shells, grenades and other devices in Hostomel, close to Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, April 18, 2022. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky) 
Valentyna Nechyporenko, 77, mourns at the grave of her 47-year-old son Ruslan, during his funeral at the cemetery in Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Monday, April 18, 2022. Ruslan was killed by Russian army on March 17 while delivering humanitarian aid to his neighbours in the streets of Bucha. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti) 
Ukrainians wait for a food distribution organised by the Red Cross in Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, on Monday, April 18, 2022. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti) 
Lyubov Lomachuk, 69, serves tea to her neighbour Valentyna Volynets, 59, after boiling water for her on a makeshift fire in a public garden near their building in Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Monday, April 18, 2022. Citizens of Bucha are still without electricity, water and gas after more than 43 days since the Russian invasion began. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti) 
Two Ukrainian men fill their bottles with the water they draw from a public fountain in Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, on Monday, April 18, 2022. Citizens of Bucha are still without electricity, water and gas after more than 43 days since the Russian invasion began. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti) 
Volunteers carry the body of a civilian killed by the Russian Army in Bucha, to be taken to a morgue for investigation on Monday, April 18, 2022. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti) 
Ukrainian sappers carry a Russian military drone backdropped by the Antonov An-225, world’s biggest cargo aircraft destroyed by the Russian troops during recent fighting, at the Antonov airport in Hostomel, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, April 18, 2022. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky) 
Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) servicemen enter an apartment during an operation to arrest suspected Russian collaborators in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Monday, April 18, 2022. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana) 
A man suspected to be a Russian collaborator is detained during an operation by Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Monday, April 18, 2022. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana) 
Elderly people are evacuated from a hospice in Chasiv Yar city, Donetsk district, Ukraine, Monday, April 18, 2022. At least 35 men and women, some in wheelchairs and most of them with mobility issues, were helped by volunteers to flee from the region that has been under attack in the last weeks. They are being transported to Khmelnytskyi, in western Ukraine. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris) 
Elderly men in beds, at a hospice in Chasiv Yar city, Donetsk district, Ukraine, Monday, April 18, 2022. At least 35 men and women, some in wheelchairs and most of them with mobility issues, were helped by volunteers to flee from the region that has been under attack in the last weeks. They are being transported to Khmelnytskyi, in western Ukraine. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris) 
Russian military vehicles move on a highway in an area controlled by Russian-backed separatist forces near Mariupol, Ukraine, Monday, April 18, 2022. Mariupol, a strategic port on the Sea of Azov, has been besieged by Russian troops and forces from self-proclaimed separatist areas in eastern Ukraine for more than six weeks. (AP Photo/Alexei Alexandrov) 
Damaged and burned vehicles are seen at a destroyed part of the Illich Iron & Steel Works Metallurgical Plant, as smoke rises from the Metallurgical Combine Azovstal during heavy fighting, in an area controlled by Russian-backed separatist forces in Mariupol, Ukraine, Monday, April 18, 2022. Mariupol, a strategic port on the Sea of Azov, has been besieged by Russian troops and forces from self-proclaimed separatist areas in eastern Ukraine for more than six weeks. (AP Photo/Alexei Alexandrov) 
Servicemen of the Donetsk People’s Republic militia look at bodies of Ukrainian soldiers placed in plastic bags in a tunnel, part of the Illich Iron & Steel Works Metallurgical Plant, the second largest metallurgical enterprise in Ukraine, in an area controlled by Russian-backed separatist forces in Mariupol, Ukraine, Monday, April 18, 2022. Mariupol, a strategic port on the Sea of Azov, has been besieged by Russian troops and forces from self-proclaimed separatist areas in eastern Ukraine for more than six weeks. (AP Photo/Alexei Alexandrov) 
Burned vehicles are seen at the destroyed part of the Illich Iron & Steel Works Metallurgical Plant, as smoke rises from the Metallurgical Combine Azovstal during heavy fighting, in an area controlled by Russian-backed separatist forces in Mariupol, Ukraine, Monday, April 18, 2022. Mariupol, a strategic port on the Sea of Azov, has been besieged by Russian troops and forces from self-proclaimed separatist areas in eastern Ukraine for more than six weeks. (AP Photo/Alexei Alexandrov) 
In this image from video provided by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Office, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks from Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, April 18, 2022. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP) 
People board transports to move to Ukrainian city of Dnipro during an evacuation of civilians in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, Tuesday, April 19, 2022. (AP Photo/Andriy Andriyenko) 
People board transport to move to Ukrainian city of Dnipro during an evacuation of civilians in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, Tuesday, April 19, 2022. (AP Photo/Andriy Andriyenko) 
A woman with a cat sits in a bus to move to Ukrainian city of Dnipro during an evacuation of civilians in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, Tuesday, April 19, 2022. (AP Photo/Andriy Andriyenko)
KYIV, Ukraine | Russia ratcheted up its battle for control of Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, intensifying assaults on cities and towns along a front hundreds of miles long in what officials on both sides described as a new phase of the war.
After a Russian push to the capital failed to overrun the city, the Kremlin declared that its main goal was the capture of the eastern Donbas region. If successful, that offensive would give President Vladimir Putin a vital piece of Ukraine and a badly needed victory that he could present to the Russian people amid the war’s mounting casualties and the economic hardship caused by the West’s sanctions.
In recent weeks, Russian forces that withdrew from Kyiv have regrouped in preparation for an all-out offensive in the Donbas, where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces for the past eight years and have declared two independent republics that have been recognized by Russia.
While Ukraine’s president and other officials said the offensive had started, observers noted that it was just the beginning of a new massive onslaught.
Ukraine’s military said early Tuesday that a “new phase of war” began a day earlier when “the occupiers made an attempt to break through our defenses along nearly the entire frontline.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview that “another phase of this operation is starting now.”
In what appeared to be an intensification of attacks, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said that air-launched missiles destroyed 13 Ukrainian troop and weapons locations while the air force struck 60 other Ukrainian military facilities, including missile warhead storage depots. Russian artillery hit 1,260 Ukrainian military facilities and 1,214 troops concentrations over the last 24 hours. The claims could not be independently verified.
The Pentagon cast the stepped-up campaign as “shaping operations” setting the stage for a broader offensive in the mostly Russian-speaking Donbas region.
The United States believes that Russian forces are “continuing to set the conditions for what they believe will be eventual success on the ground by putting in more forces, putting in more enablers, putting in more command and control capability for operations yet to come,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said Monday.
The assaults began that day along a boomerang-shaped front that stretches more than 300 miles (480 kilometers) from northeastern Ukraine to the country’s southeast.
Russia said it struck several areas with missiles, including the northeastern city of Kharkiv as well as as areas around Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro west of the Donbas. Five civilians were killed in a barrage on Kharkiv, Gov. Oleh Synyehubov said Tuesday.
Moscow’s troops seized control of one town in the Donbas on Monday, according to Luhansk Gov. Serhiy Haidai. The breakthrough in Kreminna takes the Russians one small step closer to their apparent goal of encircling Ukrainian troops in the region by advancing on them from the north and south and squeezing them against territory held by Moscow’s troops to the east.
Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s national security council, said that the defensive line had held elsewhere.
The capture of Kreminna also takes the Russians closer to the city of Slovyansk, whose loss by the Russia-backed separatists represented a humiliating setback for Moscow in the early stages of the separatist conflict in 2014.
Key to the campaign to take the east is the capture of Mariupol, a port city in the region that the Russians have besieged since the early days of the war.
Shelling continued there and Russia issued a fresh ultimatum Tuesday to the Ukrainian troops holed up there to surrender, saying those who come out will “keep their lives.” The Ukrainians have ignored previous such offers.
Securing Mariupol would free Russian troops up to move elsewhere in the Donbas, deprive Ukraine of a vital port, and complete a land bridge between Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, seized from Ukraine from 2014.
Denys Prokopenko, commander of the Azov Regiment of the Ukrainian National Guard that is guarding the last known Ukrainian pocket of resistance in Mariupol, said in a video message that Russia had begun dropping bunker-buster bombs on the Azovstal steel plant where the regiment was holding out.
Civilians are also believed to be sheltering at the plant, which covers the territory of about 11 square kilometers (over 4 square miles).
On Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address that a “significant part of the entire Russian army” is now concentrated on the battle for the Donbas.
“No matter how many Russian troops are driven there, we will fight,” Zelenskyy vowed. “We will defend ourselves.”
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Associated Press journalists Felipe Dana in Kharkiv, Ukraine; Nico Maounis and Philip Crowther in Lviv, Ukraine; and Robert Burns in Washington contributed to this report, as did other AP staff members around the world.
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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine