Ukraine Reinforces 'Extremely Critical' Frontline Town

Ukraine has rushed soldiers to the embattled eastern town of Avdiivka, surrounded on three sides by Russian forces, where the military said the situation was "extremely critical".

The announcement of reinforcements came as a Ukrainian rocket strike on the Russian border city of Belgorod killed at least five people, Russian officials said.

Both sides are escalating aerial attacks as the war nears the end of its second year. Ukraine's position around Avdiivka in the eastern Donetsk region has grown increasingly precarious.

"The Third Separate Assault Brigade confirms that it was urgently redeployed to strengthen Ukrainian troops in the Avdiivka area," the brigade said in a Telegram post.

It described the situation as "extremely critical," "threatening" and "unstable", adding that Russia was "throwing new forces and resources into the town".

Russian troops, who have managed to almost encircle the town through a series of bloody attacks launched last year, have made fresh progress in recent days.

Bringing in supplies and evacuating the few hundred civilians who have remained was "complicated," a Ukrainian army spokesman said Thursday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in late January that Russia troops had reached the city's outskirts. They have also cut a key access road, according to reports from both Ukrainian and Russian military bloggers.

Ukraine's new army chief Oleksandr Syrsky acknowledged that his troops were outnumbered on the battlefield and facing "extremely difficult" conditions after a visit Wednesday to troops around Avdiivka.

The battle for the industrial hub, less than 10 kilometres (6 miles) north of the city of Donetsk, has been one of the bloodiest of the two-year war.

It has drawn comparisons with last year's grinding fight for Bakhmut, in which tens of thousands of soldiers were killed.

Should Russian forces punch through Ukraine's stretched defences, it would be the most significant territorial gain for Moscow since it seized Bakhmut last May.

Both sides have escalated aerial attacks in a bid to hit targets away from the entrenched frontlines.

A Ukrainian rocket strike killed at least five people in the Russian city of Belgorod on Thursday, the region's governor said.

Images of the aftermath showed a blown-out shopping centre and scattered debris. One showed a body covered with a blanket nearby.

"According to preliminary data, five people were killed in Belgorod, including one child, and another 18 people were injured, five of them children," governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.

Belgorod city lies about 30 kilometres (19 miles) from the border with Ukraine and has been repeatedly struck by what Moscow says is indiscriminate shelling by Kyiv's forces.

On the diplomatic front, concern is growing in Kyiv and Western capitals over Ukraine's ability to hold out against intensifying Russian attacks without more Western military support.

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said Thursday the delay in passing new US aid for Ukraine was already hurting Kyiv's forces on the battlefield.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky will travel to Berlin and Paris on Friday for meetings with Olaf Scholz and Emmanuel Macron, his office announced.

Kyiv has been pressing Europe to deliver more much-needed artillery shells, amid frontline shortages.

Zelensky will then meet US Vice President Kamala Harris at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, Kyiv said.

Both sides also launched a wave of overnight aerial attacks.

Russia fired 26 missiles, killing at least one person and destroying multiple homes, Ukraine said.

Russia blamed a Ukrainian drone attack overnight for a blaze at an oil depot in the western Kursk region, close to the border with Ukraine.

Kyiv has struck multiple Russian energy facilities over the winter in what it has called "fair" retribution for Moscow's own attempts to cripple Ukraine's power grid.

Russian attacks on Ukraine killed a 66-year-old woman in the northeastern city of Chuguyiv when projectiles hit a residential area, the prosecutor's office said.

Some six people were wounded in the southern Zaporizhzhia region and three in the Lviv region, hundreds of kilometres from the frontlines in the west of Ukraine.

Russia's defence ministry said the overnight strikes had targeted Ukraine's military facilities and weapons factories.

Ukrainian police also raised the death toll from strikes on the Donetsk region on Wednesday to eight. The victims included a pregnant woman and a nine-year-old child.