Kyiv, Ukraine –
U.S. secretaries of state and defense met with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky on Sunday night during a high-level visit to the country’s capital by a U.S. delegation since the start of the Russian invasion.
The meeting with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, which was confirmed by a senior Ukrainian official, came as Ukraine pressed the West for more powerful weapons against Russia’s campaign in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine. Moscow sought to displace the last Ukrainian troops in the battered port of Mariupol.
“Yes, they are meeting with the president. Let’s hope that something will be decided for further assistance,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Alexei Arestovich told Russian lawyer and activist Mark Feygin on his YouTube show Feygin Live. . The United States has not yet commented.
Ahead of the session with Blinken and Austin Zelensky, he said he was looking for Americans to deliver results, both in terms of weapons and security guarantees.
“You can’t come to us empty-handed today, and we’re not just expecting presents or cakes, we’re expecting concrete things and concrete weapons,” he said.
Zelensky’s last face-to-face meeting with a senior US official was on February 19 in Munich with Vice President Kamala Harris, five days before Russia’s invasion. As the West directs military equipment to Ukraine, Zelensky has repeatedly stressed that his country needs more heavy weapons, including long-range air defense systems and fighter jets.
In an apparent push for Ukraine, opinion polls say French President Emmanuel Macron will win re-election over far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, who faces questions about her ties to Moscow. The result was hailed by France’s allies in the European Union as a reassuring sign of stability and continued support for Ukraine. France plays a leading role in international efforts to punish Russia with sanctions and supplies weapons systems to Ukraine.
Zelensky’s meeting with US officials took place when Ukrainians and Russians celebrated Orthodox Easter. Speaking from Kiev’s ancient Hagia Sophia, Zelensky, a Jew, stressed its importance to 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. In the northern village of Ivanovka, where Russian tanks are still strewn on the roads, Olena Koptil said, “The Easter holiday brings no joy. I cry a lot. We can’t forget how we lived.”
The Russian military said it had hit 423 Ukrainian targets overnight, including fortified positions and troop concentrations, while its fighter jets destroyed 26 Ukrainian military sites, including an explosives factory and several artillery depots.
After failing to take Kyiv, the Russians are seeking full control of the eastern industrial center, where Moscow-backed separatists controlled part of the territory before the war.
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, otherwise occupied by the Russians.
Zelenski said he stressed the need to evacuate civilians from Mariupol, including from the steel plant, in a Sunday conversation with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is due to speak later with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
Arestovich, Zelensky’s adviser, said Ukraine had offered to negotiate with Russia next to the sprawling steel plant. Arestovich told Telegram that Russia had not responded to the proposal, which would include the creation of humanitarian corridors and the exchange of Russian prisoners of war for fighters still at the plant.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is due to travel to Turkey on Monday, followed by Moscow and Kyiv. Zelensky said it was a mistake for Guterres to visit Russia before Ukraine.
“Why? Should we transmit signals from Russia? What should we look for? ”Zelenski said on Saturday. “There are no corpses scattered on Kutuzov Avenue,” he said, referring to one of Moscow’s main streets.
Mariupol has endured fierce battles 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. Recent satellite images show what appear to be mass graves west and east of Mariupol.
Children in an underground bunker have been spotted receiving Easter presents in a video released Sunday by the far-right Azov Battalion, which is among Ukrainian forces at the Mariupol steel plant. The group’s deputy commander, Svyatoslav Palamar, said the video was shot at the plant.
A small child is seen wearing homemade cellophane diapers, and people are seen hanging laundry on makeshift hangers.
“Please help us,” a woman said in tears in the video, appealing to world leaders. “We want to live in our city, in our country. We are tired of these bombings, the constant air strikes on our land. How much longer will this continue?”
Mikhail Podoliak, another adviser to the president, tweeted that the Russian military was attacking the plant with heavy bombs and artillery, while amassing forces and equipment for direct attack.
Zelenski accused Russians on Saturday of committing war crimes by killing civilians and setting up “filtration camps” near Mariupol for people trying to leave the city. He said Ukrainians – many of them children – are then sent to Russian-occupied areas or to Russia itself, often as far as Siberia or the Far East.
Allegations cannot be verified independently. But they were repeated by Ukrainian MP Yevhenia Kravchuk on ABC’s This Week.
“They pulled these people out of Mariupol – they’re in filtration camps … that’s something that can’t happen in the 21st century,” Kravchuk said.
Zelensky also claims that the intercepted communications recorded Russian soldiers discussing “how to cover up the traces of their crimes” in Mariupol.
And he highlighted the death of a 3-month-old girl in a Russian missile strike on Saturday at the Black Sea port of Odessa. The baby was among eight people killed when Russia fired cruise missiles at Odessa, Ukrainian authorities said.
Ukrainian news agency UNIAN, citing social media, reported that the baby’s mother Valeria Glodan and grandmother also died when a rocket hit a residential area. Zelenski promised to find and punish the perpetrators.
“The war started when this baby was 1 month old,” Zelenski said. “Can you imagine what’s going on? They’re dirty shit, no other words about it.”
For the Donbass offensive, Russia again gathered troops fighting around Kyiv and northern Ukraine. The British Ministry of Defense said that Ukrainian forces had repulsed numerous attacks in the last week and had “caused significant costs to Russian forces”.
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, quoted in particular “the thousands of people surrounded in Mariupol, civilians, 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.”
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Associated Press journalists Jesitsa Fish in Slavyansk, Ukraine, Mstislav Chernov and Felipe Dana in Kharkov, Ukraine, Juras Karmanau in Lviv, Kara Anna, Inna Varenitsa and Alexander Stashevsky in Kvov and AP officials around the world.
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