There is no sign of a Russian ‘pause’ for one Ukrainian town under fire.
BAKHMUT, Ukraine — Russia’s defense ministry has said that it is conducting an “operational pause” in the war in Ukraine to allow units that have been fighting to rest, prompting military analysts to suggest that Russia was not ready to press into a full assault within Donetsk Province after its capture of neighboring Luhansk.

Yet while Russian troops have eased up on the sort of intense, all-day artillery strikes that they unleashed to help capture the final city in Luhansk Province, they have begun launching almost daily strikes on the next line of cities — Sloviansk, Kramatorsk and Bakhmut.

On Friday, families were fixing broken roofs and windows in the city of Bakhmut after another night of Russian shelling. One man died, and three were wounded when multiple rockets smashed into a street of small one-story houses on the eastern side of the city.