 Heavy artillery fire sounded in the streets of Chesapear, a town just west of Bakhmat, and the nearby village of Kalanivka in eastern Ukraine from nearby Ukrainian positions as well as incoming impacts. Between apartment blocks in Chesapear, mainly elderly residents queued for water and food delivered by a team from the state emergency service. Officers if the emergency service knocked on doors asking elderly and disabled people in Chesapear and nearby villages to get ready for evacuation from the town, located 17 kilometers from the battered city of Bakhmat. Military administration of Chesapear said the evacuation of children from the town was completed on March 19. Ukrainian forces have repelled Russian attempts to advance into the center of Bakhmat, a top Ukrainian general said on March 21, but the situation in the city and around it remained extremely tense. The months-long battle for Bakhmat has become one of the bloodiest of Russia's nearly 13-month-old war in Ukraine.