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Russia’s offensive in eastern Ukraine gathered momentum Thursday as the United Nations’ chief surveyed the destruction in towns outside Kyiv that experienced some of the worst horrors of the .

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres condemned the atrocities visited on where evidence of mass killings of civilians was found after Russia’s retreated from the area in the face of stiffer than expected Ukrainian resistance.

Forced to regroup after failing , Russia switched its focus to the vital eastern industrial heartland, where fighting is now picking up pace. Ukraine’s military said several areas in the Donbas have come under intense fire in the past day, and satellite images showed new damage from bombardments on the last known pocket of Ukrainian resistance in Mariupol. 

Ukrainian authorities warned that civilians who are still in the southeastern port city face dangerously unsanitary conditions, while many of the dead from a two-month siege remain unburied.