Fresh strikes rock eastern Ukraine as Russia intensifies its assault

KRAMATORSK, Ukraine — Determined to seize control of Ukraine’s industrial heartland, Russia on Tuesday intensified its assaults across the country’s east, and again gave a fruitless surrender ultimatum to Ukrainian forces in the besieged southern port of Mariupol.

Bombardment boomed in eastern cities and towns in what Russia and Ukraine are each calling a major new phase of the ferocious, nearly 8-week-old war.

Russia’s military on Tuesday described an intensifying wave of attacks. Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov claimed that in the previous 24 hours, Russian forces had launched strikes against more than 1,200 Ukrainian military facilities and also targeted more than 1,200 troop concentrations. The claims could not be independently verified.

Although Ukraine says Russia has begun its long-expected all-out assault along a 300-mile-long front line in the east — and Moscow’s top diplomat confirmed Tuesday the struggle has entered its next stage — some Western military officials and analysts