Firefighters are working to put out a fire in a warehouse amid Russian bombings in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Saturday, April 23. (Felipe Dana / AP)
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he would meet with senior US officials in Kyiv on Sunday as heavy fighting continues in the eastern and southern parts of the country over Ukraine’s Easter weekend.
The White House has not yet confirmed the visit, which Zelenski says will include US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
As a new day arrives in the capital, here’s what you need to know.
Expected visit: Zelensky said he was “expecting concrete things and concrete weapons” from world leaders visiting the country after announcing he would meet with Blinken and Austin in Kyiv on Sunday. The potential visit will be the first by senior US officials since the war broke out. The White House declined to comment on the potential trip.
Victims in Odessa: At least eight people, including a three-month-old baby, have died after Russian missile strikes on the southwestern port city of Odessa, Zelensky said on Saturday, condemning the attack a day before many Ukrainians celebrated Easter.
Humanitarian crisis: An evacuation corridor from the besieged southern city of Mariupol was “thwarted” by Russian forces on Saturday, according to a Ukrainian official. Ukrainian authorities say more than 100,000 people remain in the bombed city, which the Russian government says it controls. Ukrainian fighters continue to linger in the huge steel mine in the city of Azovstal, where civilians have been sheltered for weeks and supplies are running low.
Moscow’s plan: Russia has revealed that the goal of its invasion is to take “full control” of southern Ukraine as well as the eastern region of Donbass and create a land corridor connecting Russia with Crimea, the peninsula it annexed in 2014. The British Ministry of Defense said in a briefing on Saturday that Russian forces had not made significant progress in the last 24 hours facing Ukrainian counterattacks.
Forced deportations: Ukrainians claimed on Saturday that Russia had forcibly deported some Mariupol citizens to the Primorsky Krai in Russia’s Far East, about 8,000 kilometers (4,970 miles) from Ukraine. In early April, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk estimated that about 45,000 Ukrainian citizens had been forcibly deported to Russia since the start of the war.
Civilian Military Service: Ukrainian intelligence has also accused Russia of planning to recruit Ukrainian civilians from the occupied regions of Kherson and Zaporozhye, according to a UK military intelligence update on Saturday. That would be in violation of international law, according to a statement from the UK’s Department of Defense.
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