Smoke rises from the area in the direction of Avdiivka (Picture: Reuters)

The Ukrainian city of Avdiivka has entered the fifth consecutive day of Russian bombardment.

Russia is deploying additional forces to encircle the city and sits just north of Donetsk which is currently occupied by Russia.

City head Vitalii Barabash said ‘the enemy has not stopped either assaulting or shelling positions’ around Avdiivka.

His comments come after Russia’s UN ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, told a UN Security Council meeting that the intensified attacks in the east amounted to a new stage in Moscow’s campaign in Ukraine.

‘Russian troops have, for several days now, switched over to active combat action practically throughout the entire front line… The so-called Ukrainian counter-offensive can therefore be considered finished,’ he said.

But earlier this week Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukrainian forces were keeping Russian troops at bay and ‘holding our ground’.

Meanwhile fighting along the northern stretch of Ukraine’s eastern front has ‘significantly worsened’ in recent days, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of Ukraine’s land forces said.

He said Russian forces had regrouped following losses and were mounting attacks around the village of Makiivka and pushing towards the city of Kupiansk, with the goal of encircling Kupiansk and reaching the Oskil River.

Ukrainian servicemen fire a BM-21 Grad multiple launch rocket system towards Russian troops (Picture: Reuters)

An interior view shows an administrative building damaged by a Russian missile strike in Donetsk (Picture: Reuters)

The deputy head of the Bakhmut police district, walks out from a damaged residential building in the frontline town of Chasiv Yar, in the Donetsk region (Picture: AFP via Getty Images)

A 60-year-old woman was killed today in Russian shelling of the city of Beryslav in Ukraine’s partly occupied Kherson region.

In Russia, the country’s Defence Ministry said air defence systems shot down two Ukrainian drones over the Black Sea near the southern resort city Sochi on Saturday morning.

Ukrainian officials have never acknowledged responsibility for attacks on Russian territory.