Heavy shelling affects Ukraine's Donetsk

STORY: "You couldn’t say where they were shelling or what they were shelling, it was coming and coming down on us non-stop,” said Olga Karagodina, a local shop owner.

"We didn’t open the store today, it’s been impossible to go outside since eight in the morning," she said.

Ukraine routinely denies carrying out any attacks on the two regions that comprise the Donbas, the self-styled Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics, where separatists seized large swathes of land in 2014.

Russia recognised the two regions as independent states on the eve of its Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine.