Ukrainian soldiers on a tank ride along the road toward their positions near the eastern city of Bakhmut on May 23.
Russian shelling of Ukraine's southern Kherson region has killed two civilians and wounded three, a regional official said on May 24, as the Ukrainian military said the battle for the eastern city of Bakhmut was still under way.
"Russia targeted residential quarters of civilian-populated areas, and infrastructure objectives in [Kherson's] Beryslav district," the head of Kherson regional military administration, Oleksandr Prokudin, said on Telegram.
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Prokudin said Russian forces carried out 64 shellings of the territory controlled by the Ukrainian government in Kherson, using heavy artillery, Grad missiles, tanks, and drones.
After Ukraine recaptured parts of the Kherson region last fall, Russian forces have been shelling the region and the city of Kherson almost daily from across the Dnieper River.
In eastern Ukraine, fighting for control of Bakhmut and its surroundings is still under way, with Ukrainian defenders repelling 26 assaults by Russian forces over the past 24 hours, Ukraine's General Staff reported on May 24.
Russia's main directions of attack concentrate around the Bakhmut-Avdiyivka-Maryinka front line, which remains at the epicenter of hostilities in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk.
Russian forces have also been launching attacks on Lyman, north of Bakhmut, and Kupyansk, in the Kharkiv region, the military said in its daily report from the front.
Both Russia and Ukraine have recently been claiming success in Bakhmut.
Russia claims it has the city under its control after a months of fighting that is estimated to have claimed thousands of casualties, but the Ukrainian military says it has been advancing on the northern and southern flanks of the city, aiming to encircle it.
WATCH: A Ukrainian spokesman said on May 22 that Russian forces walked straight into a "trap" in Bakhmut, with Ukrainian troops advancing on the flanks of the town poised to encircle them.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on May 23 visited troops on the front line in Donetsk. Zelenskiy posted pictures of himself handing out medals to fighters at a site near the city of Vuhledar.
Meanwhile, fighting appeared to cease around Russia's Belgorod region a day after armed fighters allegedly coming from inside Ukraine launched one of the largest cross-border incursions since the start of the war.
The Ukrainian government has denied any role in the events.
The Russian Defense Ministry on May 23 claimed that its troops had surrounded enemy fighters and used "air strikes, artillery fire, and active action by border units" to push back the forces, killing many of them.
It was not possible to independently confirm the claims, but the governor of the Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said so-called "anti-terrorism measures" introduced earlier had been called off.
WATCH: A Ukrainian reserve colonel says that fighting in Russia's Belgorod region was a "combat reconnaissance mission" launched by units of Russian citizens that have been fighting on Kyiv's side since 2014.
Two groups -- the Russian Volunteer Corps and the Freedom of Russia Legion -- claimed responsibility for the incursion that shocked local residents and Russian authorities. They said they were anti-Kremlin Russian fighters seeking to overthrow President Vladimir Putin.
