At an army checkpoint on the edge of town, heavy artillery shelling could be heard while a plume of black smoke rose above the outskirts. Automatic gunfire rattled out from nearby fields. Families fled the fighting through a barbed-wire checkpoint with only as much as they could carry. A pro-Russian rebel stands guard at a checkpoint in eastern Ukrainian town of Kramatorsk. Credit:Reuters "It's a mess," sobbed a young woman as she clutched her husband's arm. "It's war." Andrei Bander left with his four-year-old daughter. "We are going. We don't even know where. We will head to Russia though because it's clear we need to leave Ukraine," he said. In support for the Ukrainian forces, acting President Oleksandr Turchynov and Interior Minister Arsen Avakov paid an impromptu visit to another army roadblock on the far side of the encircled town on Wednesday.

A spokesman for government forces said two soldiers had been killed and 45 wounded since Kiev launched its offensive near Slaviansk with aircraft, helicopters and artillery. Separatists controlling the town since early April denied the government's casualty figures and claimed to have shot down an army helicopter – something denied by Kiev. "Losses to the Ukrainian side were more than ours," said Aleksander Boroday, leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic. He said nine people had died and 15 were injured among separatists forces in Slaviansk. At a news conference in the regional capital Donetsk, he said separatists would mobilise forces and train volunteers to fight in Slaviansk and defend their positions in Donetsk. Ukrainian president-elect Petro Poroshenko ordered the resumption of operations by government forces soon after his May 25 election to quell the rebellion by militia in the Russian-speaking region, where people were largely unable or unwilling to vote in the poll.

In Warsaw, where he met US President Barack Obama, he said he would unveil a plan for a "peaceful resolution" of the situation in the east after his inauguration next Saturday. Kiev said the fighting was stirred up by Moscow, which opposes its pro-Western course, and accuses Russia of letting volunteers cross into Ukraine to fight alongside the rebels. Moscow denied this and renewed calls on Wednesday for Ukraine to open dialogue with the separatists. But the separatists look to Moscow for help. "When is [Russian President Vladimir] Putin going to come help us?" asked a young man in fatigues at a rebel checkpoint. Reuters