Russian forces struck targets across Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region on Tuesday to prepare the path for an expected armoured thrust to try to take more territory as the five-month-old war entered a new phase.

The strikes, reported by the region’s local governor and Russian military, followed Moscow’s capture of the city of Lysychansk on Sunday, a move that handed it total control of the Luhansk region, one of its main war aims. Taking full control of Donetsk, the other region in Donbas, that has become the stage of the biggest battle in Europe in generations, is another goal Moscow’s “special military operation.”