Ukraine launches largest attack on Donetsk in years, says report

Ukrainian forces staged their heaviest shelling attack in years in the country’s Russian-controlled east on Thursday, Moscow-installed officials said, as both sides ruled out a Christmas truce in the nearly 10-month-old war.

Alexei Kulemzin, the Russian-backed mayor of Donetsk city, said 40 rockets were fired from BM-21 Grad multiple rocket launchers at civilians in the city centre in the early hours. Meanwhile Russian forces kept up shelling and air strikes along the entire eastern front line, killing one person, while two were killed in the southern city of Kherson, Ukrainian officials said.

Moscow and Kyiv are not currently holding talks to end Europe's biggest conflict since World War Two, raging mainly in Ukraine's east and south with little movement on either side.

“The Kremlin... is seeking to turn the conflict into a prolonged armed confrontation,” a senior Ukrainian officer, Brigadier General Oleksiy Gromov, told a news briefing on Thursday. He also dismissed the possibility of a truce over the festive period.

On Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had said a Christmas ceasefire was “not on the agenda”.

Kulemzin cast the Donetsk attack as a war crime and said it was the biggest on the city since 2014, when pro-Moscow separatists seized it from Kyiv’s control. Preliminary estimates showed five people had been hurt, including a child, he said.