Live Updates | Civilians bombed in Donetsk, Lugansk

KYIV, Ukraine – Four people died and nine others were injured in the Russian bombardment of the Donetsk region on Monday, regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said on Tuesday.

Two of the victims were children: a 9-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy, Kyrylenko said in the Telegram messaging app.

Luhansk region governor Serhiy Haidai said the Russians had shelled civilians 17 times in the past 24 hours, with the towns of Popasna, Lysychansk and Girske suffering the most.

“Popasna withstood four powerful artillery attacks and Lysychansk withstood two. There is damage to two houses in Lysychansk, two in Popasna, at least one in Girske. We are checking the information about the victims,” said Haidai said on Telegram on Tuesday.

Rocket fire was also reported in the Zaporizhzhia region on Tuesday morning by local officials.

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KEY DEVELOPMENTS IN THE RUSSIAN-UKRAINE WAR:

— Putin gets what he didn’t want: Ukrainian army closer to the West

– Senior Russian diplomat warns Ukraine against provoking WWIII

— Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra organized by the Met, Polish operas

– Follow all AP stories about Russia’s war on Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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OTHER DEVELOPMENTS:

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian forces have repelled six attacks in the past 24 hours in the two regions that make up Donbass, Ukraine’s industrial heartland, the General Staff said in its Tuesday morning update .

The Ukrainian army destroyed four Russian tanks, five artillery systems, 13 armored vehicle units, 15 motor vehicle units, two tankers and one anti-aircraft gun, according to the update.

The Ukrainian General Staff said that Russian forces continued their offensive operations in the east of the country with the aim of taking full control of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and establishing a land corridor to Crimea.

Fighting continues around the towns of Rubizhne and Popasna in the Luhansk region, according to the update. Russian forces also continue to shell Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, and block Ukrainian units in the area of ​​the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol, the last stronghold of Ukrainian forces in the besieged port city.

In the area of ​​Velyka Oleksandrivka, a village in the largely Russian-controlled Kherson region, Ukrainian forces destroyed an ammunition depot and “eliminated” more than 70 Russian soldiers, the General Staff said.

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LVIV, Ukraine – The British Ministry of Defense said Russian forces had taken the Ukrainian town of Kreminna.

Street-to-street fighting had been going on for days in the Ukrainian regional town of Luhansk, as evacuations of civilians there were made impossible by the war.

In a tweet on Tuesday morning, the British military said: “The town of Kreminna is believed to have fallen and heavy fighting is reported south of Izium as Russian forces attempt to advance towards the towns of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk from the north. and is.”

There was no immediate response from the Ukrainian government. Russia claimed a few days earlier to have taken the city.

Kreminna lies about 575 kilometers (355 miles) southeast of the Ukrainian capital, kyiv.

The UK has publicly provided daily intelligence reports since the start of the war. The British military has not said how it knew the Kreminna had fallen.

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned on Monday that Ukraine risked provoking a Third World War and said the threat of nuclear conflict “should not be underestimated”.

In an in-depth Russian TV interview, Lavrov accused Ukraine of stalling talks between the two countries and accused the US and Britain of pressuring kyiv not to reach an agreement .

“Everyone is reciting incantations that under no circumstances can we allow World War III,” Lavrov said, and accused Ukraine’s leaders of provoking Russia by asking NATO to get involved in the conflict.

By supplying weapons, NATO forces are “pouring oil on the fire”, he said, according to a Russian transcript on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s website.

Lavrov apparently made the remarks after US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the United States wanted “to see Russia weakened to the point where it can’t do things like invade Ukraine.”

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told The Associated Press in an interview on Monday that only talks between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin would bring about a solution.

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KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s foreign minister on Monday urged the UN chief to pressure Russia for an evacuation from the beleaguered port of Mariupol, calling it something the world body is capable of achieving.

Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told The Associated Press in an interview that he feared that while visiting Moscow on Tuesday before heading to Kyiv, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres might fall into a “trap” of the Kremlin during the war.

Kuleba said Guterres “should focus mainly on one issue: the evacuation of Mariupol.

Around 100,000 people are trapped in the seaside town as a contingent of Ukrainian fighters resist Russian forces at a steelworks where hundreds of civilians are also taking refuge.

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MARIUPOL, Ukraine — Officials in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol say a new mass grave has been identified north of the city.

Mayor Vadym Boychenko said authorities were trying to estimate the number of victims at the grave about 10 kilometers (about 6 miles) north of Mariupol.

Satellite photos released in recent days have shown what appear to be images of other mass graves.

Mariupol has been decimated by heavy fighting over the past two months. Taking the city would deprive Ukraine of a vital port and allow Moscow to establish a land corridor to the Crimean peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.