Kyiv, Ukraine (AP) – Ukraine’s leader has called for more powerful Western weapons as he prepares to meet with senior US officials in the war-torn capital on Sunday as Russian forces concentrate their attacks on the east, including trying to displaced the last Ukrainian troops lingered in the battered port city of Mariupol.
President Vladimir Zelensky announced a planned visit by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin during a lengthy press conference on Saturday night at a metro station in Kyiv. The White House did not comment.
Zelenski said he was looking to the Americans to achieve results, both in terms of weapons and security guarantees. “You can’t come to us empty-handed today, and we’re expecting not just gifts or cakes, but concrete things and concrete weapons,” he said.
The visit will be the first by senior US officials since Russia invaded Ukraine 60 days ago. Blinken briefly marched on Ukrainian soil in March to meet with the country’s foreign minister during a visit to Poland. Zelensky’s last face-to-face meeting with the US leader was on February 19 in Munich with Vice President Kamala Harris.
The meeting was to take place when Ukrainians and Russians celebrate Orthodox Easter, when believers celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, considered the happiest holiday in the Christian calendar.
Speaking Sunday at the ancient Hagia Sophia, Zelensky, a Jew, emphasized the allegorical significance of the event for a nation plagued by nearly two months of war.
“The great holiday today gives us great hope and unshakable faith that light will defeat darkness, good will defeat evil, life will defeat death, and therefore Ukraine will surely win!” He said.
Still, the war overshadowed the festivities. Residents of rural villages battered by the war approached the day with some cautious challenge.
“How do I feel? Very nervous. Everyone is nervous, “Olena Koptil said as she prepared her Easter cake in the northern village of Ivanovka, where Russian tanks were still strewn on the roads. “Easter does not bring any joy. I cry a lot. We can’t forget how we lived. “
Earlier, during a night address to the nation, Zelensky said intercepted communications had recorded Russian troops discussing “how to cover up their crimes” in Mariupol. The president also stressed the death of a 3-month-old girl in a Russian missile strike on Saturday on the Black Sea port of Odessa.
Zelensky said military equipment received from Western supporters has been a great help so far, but he also stressed that Ukraine needs more heavy weapons, including long-range air defense systems, as well as fighter jets to repel the Russian attacks.
The Russian military said it had hit 423 Ukrainian targets overnight, including fortified positions and troop concentrations, while Russian warplanes destroyed 26 Ukrainian military sites, including an explosives factory and several artillery depots.
Most of Sunday’s fighting focused on the eastern region of Donbass, where Ukrainian forces are concentrated and where Moscow-backed separatists controlled part of the pre-war territory. After failing to take Kyiv, the Russians are seeking full control of Ukraine’s eastern industrial center.
Russian forces have launched new air strikes on steel production in Mariupol, home to about 1,000 civilians, along with about 2,000 Ukrainian fighters. The Azovstal steel plant, where the defenders are hiding, is the last corner of the city’s resistance that the Russians have otherwise occupied.
Mikhail Podoliak, an adviser to the Ukrainian president, called for a localized Easter truce. He called on Russia to allow civilians to leave the plant and offered to negotiate the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops.
Podoliak tweeted that the Russian military was attacking the plant with heavy bombs and artillery, while accumulating forces and equipment for a direct assault.
Mariupol has been the center of fierce fighting since the beginning of the war due to its location on the Sea of Azov. Its capture would deprive Ukraine of a vital port, free Russian troops to fight elsewhere, and allow Moscow to build a land corridor to the Crimean peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.
It is estimated that more than 100,000 people – less than the pre-war population of about 430,000 – remain in Mariupol with scarce food, water or heat. Ukrainian authorities estimate that more than 20,000 civilians have been killed.
Satellite images released this week show what appear to be mass graves excavated in cities west and east of Mariupol.
Zelensky accused the Russians of committing war crimes by killing civilians, as well as setting up “filtration camps” near Mariupol for people caught leaving the city. From there, he said, Ukrainians are sent to areas under Russian occupation or to Russia itself, often as far as Siberia or the Far East. Many of them, he said, are children.
Allegations cannot be verified independently.
During attacks on Orthodox Easter, Russian forces raided cities in southern and eastern Ukraine. The 3-month-old baby is among eight people killed when Russia fired cruise missiles at Odessa, Ukrainian authorities said.
Ukrainian news agency UNIAN, citing social media reports, said the baby’s mother, Valeria Glodan, and her grandmother also died when a rocket hit a residential area. Zelenski promised to find and punish those responsible for the strike.
“The war started when this baby was one month old,” he said. Can you imagine what is happening? “They’re dirty scum, no other words about it.”
For the Donbass offensive, Russia has reunited troops fighting around Kyiv and earlier in northern Ukraine. The British Ministry of Defense said on Sunday that Ukrainian forces had repulsed numerous attacks in the past week and had “caused significant costs to Russian forces”.
“Russia’s poor morale and limited time to rebuild, re-equip and reorganize forces from previous offensives are likely to hamper Russia’s combat effectiveness,” the ministry’s intelligence update said.
The spiritual leaders of the world’s Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholics called for relief for the suffering population of Ukraine.
From Istanbul, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I said a “human tragedy” was taking place. , Bartholomew, considered the first of his equal Eastern Orthodox patriarchs, quoting in particular “the thousands of civilians surrounded in Mariupol, including the wounded, the elderly, women and many children.”
Speaking from a window overlooking St. Peter’s Square, Pope Francis renewed his call for an Easter truce, calling it “a minimal and tangible sign of a desire for peace.”
“The attacks must be stopped in order to respond to the suffering of the exhausted population,” Francis said, without naming the aggressor.
___
Associated Press journalists Yeshitsa Fish from Slavyansk, Ukraine, Mstislav Chernov and Felipe Dana in Kharkov, Ukraine, Juras Karmanau in Lviv, Kara Anna and Inna Varenitsa in Kvov, and Associated Press staff from around the world contributed to this story.
___
Follow the AP’s coverage of the war
Add Comment