KYIV, Ukraine — Weekend shelling by Russian forces killed at least seven civilians, Ukrainian officials reported Sunday as Pope Francis and Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby used their traditional Easter messages to highlight the war in Ukraine and other conflicts around the world.

While Russia continued to concentrate on seizing all of Ukraine’s industrial east, two other provinces – Kharkiv in the northeast and Zaporizhzhia in the southeast – came under missile, rocket and artillery fire, the Ukrainian military reported. The governor of the Kherson region, Oleksandr Prokudin, said two communities there were hit by bombs from warplanes late Sunday, but he did not immediately report any casualties.

Kharkiv governor Oleh Syniehubov said two men died Sunday in shelling in Kupiansk, a city that Russia held before Ukrainian forces regained control of almost all of the province.

The city remained under attack later Sunday as Russian forces targeted residential areas with multiple rocket launchers, Syniehubov said.

Shelling also killed two people overnight, one of them a child born in 2012, in the city of Zaporizhzhia, the capital of that province, City Council Secretary Anatoliy Kurtev said.

The Zaporizhzhia region’s governor, Yurii Malashko, said 18 communities in all were shelled. Three people were killed and five were wounded on Saturday, Malashko said.

Zaporizhzhia is home to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant and one of four Ukrainian provinces that Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally annexed in September. Since then, Russia’s military has sought to oust Ukraine’s troops from those areas, especially Luhansk and Donetsk provinces, which make up the industrial region known as the Donbas.

Bakhmut, a city in Donestsk, has seen the 13-month war’s longest battle. Western analysts have said Russian forces recently made it into the center of the city. Seizing Bakhmut after more than eight months would give the Kremlin a badly wanted victory and a path to push on toward bigger Ukrainian-held cities.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said late Saturday that it thinks Russia’s overall offensive “is approaching culmination.”

The institute cited Ivan Tymochko, the head of the Ukrainian Council of Reservists for the country’s ground forces, as reporting that recent Russian attacks appeared designed to distract and disperse Ukrainian troops preparing for a potential counteroffensive.