You're reading: RFE/RL: Deadly spike in fighting reported in eastern Ukraine

Monitoring officials say clashes between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine have escalated in recent days to some of the fiercest fighting of 2018.

Alexander Hug, the deputy chief of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s monitoring mission in Ukraine (OSCE-SMM), said it had confirmed that two civilians were killed and another three were injured last week, adding that “we have many more cases pending.”

Read more here.