Russia is turning Ukraine’s Avdiivka into “a place from post-apocalyptic movies”, intensifying shelling and forcing a nearly full shutdown of the frontline city, the top local official said on Sunday (26 March).

Some 2,000 civilians are left in Avdiivka, a Donetsk region city some 90 kilometres southwest of the besieged Bakhmut, according to officials. The city had a pre-war population of more than 30,000.