A Russian strike on Tuesday killed 21 people during the distribution of pension payments in a frontline town of eastern Ukraine threatened by Moscow's push to capture the entire industrial region.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky posted amateur video showing several corpses strewn on the ground, and a burned-out minivan near a playground, images that AFP could not independently verify.

"A brutally savage Russian airstrike with an aerial bomb on the rural settlement of Yarova in the Donetsk region. Directly on people. Ordinary civilians. At the very moment when pensions were being disbursed," Zelensky wrote online.

Moscow has claimed the industrial region as part of Russia despite not having full control over it.

Kyiv says the Kremlin has massed 100,000 troops at a key part of the

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