‘This is what madness looks like’: Russia steps up attacks in eastern Ukraine

A Ukrainian serviceman carries his injured comrade, who was evacuated from the battlefield, into a hospital in the Donetsk region (Evgeniy Maloletka/AP)

Russian forces are escalating their onslaught against Ukrainian positions around the wrecked eastern city of Bakhmut, Ukrainian officials said, bringing new levels of death and devastation in the months-long conflict.

“Everything is completely destroyed, there is almost no life left,” Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said of the scene around Bakhmut and the nearby town of Soledar.