Russia intensifies assault on Ukraine's last Donbas strongholds as civilians flee

In the eastern reaches of Ukraine, where the Donbas has long been a wound that will not close, Russia is pressing its most concentrated assault yet on the twin cities of Kramatorsk and Slovyansk — the last significant ground Ukraine holds in a region Moscow has claimed as its own since 2014. Glide bombs fall now almost daily where they once fell weekly, and families with children are being told, plainly, that leaving is the only way to survive. The question being asked in these streets, and in the corridors of diplomacy, is whether a fortress can hold when the siege has become the new normal.