KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia ratcheted up its battle for control of Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland on Tuesday, intensifying assaults on cities and towns along a front hundreds of miles long in what officials on both sides described as a new phase of the war.

After a Russian push to overrun the capital failed, the Kremlin declared that its main goal was the capture of the eastern Donbas region, where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces for eight years.

If successful, that offensive would give President Vladimir Putin a vital piece of Ukraine and a badly needed victory in the now 7-week-old war that he could present to the Russian people amid mounting casualties and economic hardship caused by the West’s sanctions.

The administration said Monday evening that it will stop enforcing the federal mask mandate for travel — for now — after a federal judge in Florida earlier in the day struck down the CDC’s mask requirement for planes and trains, ruling that the agency overstepped its statutory authority.

An administration official said the federal government is still determining how it will respond to the ruling, but that the CDC masking order, which is enforced by the TSA, “is not in effect at this time.” United Airlines, which had earlier Monday said it would keep enforcing the mandate until it received more clarity, on Monday evening said it would no longer enforce the mandate for domestic flights. Airlines have been pressing for some time for the mandate to be removed.

Russian forces unleashed a massive artillery and rocket barrage all along Ukraine’s eastern front Monday night in what Ukrainian officials say is the start of a new offensive stretching from Kharkiv in the north to Mariupol in the south.

As streams of rocket artillery hit Kharkiv and Mykolaiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivered a video message saying, “Russian forces have started the battle for the Donbas that they have been getting ready for a long time.”

Head of the National Security and Defense Council Oleksiy Danilov added that “an active phase of the Russian offensive set off almost along the entire front line,” signaling what most expect to be a bloody new phase of the seven-week-old war.

WASHINGTON/CHICAGO, April 18 (Reuters) – The Biden administration will no longer enforce a U.S. mask mandate on public transportation, after a federal judge in Florida on Monday ruled that the 14-month-old directive was unlawful, overturning a key White House effort to reduce the spread of COVID-19.

Soon after the announcement, all major carriers including American Airlines (AAL.O), United Airlines (UAL.O) and Delta Air Lines (DAL.N), as well as national train line Amtrak relaxed the restrictions effective immediately.

The International Monetary Fund has slashed its expectations for global economic growth over the next two years because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, comparing the ripple effects from the conflict to an “earthquake.”

“The economic effects of the war are spreading far and wide,” the organization said in its latest outlook, published Tuesday.

The IMF now expects the world economy to expand by 3.6% in both 2022 and 2023, a sharp deceleration from growth of 6.1% in 2021. The new forecasts reflect downgrades of 0.8 and 0.2 percentage points, respectively, from its January forecast.