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News in Ukraine: The Russians are trying to storm the plant in Mariupol

Kyiv, Ukraine –

Russian forces in Ukraine tried to storm a steel plant housing soldiers and civilians in the southern city of Mariupol on Saturday in a bid to crush the last pocket of resistance on the ground with deep symbolic and strategic value to Moscow, Ukrainian authorities said.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky announced that he would meet on Sunday in the country’s capital with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. The White House declined to comment.

Speaking at a press conference, Zelenski gave some details about the logistics of the meeting, but said he expected concrete results – “not just gifts or cakes, we expect concrete things and concrete weapons.”

This will be the first high-level US trip to Kyiv since the start of the war on February 24. While visiting Poland in March, Blinken briefly marched on Ukrainian soil to meet with the country’s foreign minister. Zelensky’s last face-to-face meeting with the US leader was on February 19 with Vice President Kamala Harris.

During attacks on Orthodox Easter, Russian forces raided cities in southern and eastern Ukraine.

A 3-month-old baby was among eight killed when Russia fired cruise missiles at the Black Sea port city of Odessa, officials said. Zelenski said 18 more were injured.

“The war started when this baby was a month old. Can you imagine what’s going on?” said Zelensky. “They’re just bastards … I have no other words for that, just bastards.”

The Ukrainian military announced on Saturday that it had destroyed a Russian command post in Kherson, a southern city that had fallen from Russian forces at the start of the war.

A command post was struck on Friday, killing two generals and seriously injuring another, according to a statement from Ukrainian military intelligence. The Russian military did not comment on the allegation, which could not be confirmed.

Zelensky’s adviser, Alexei Arestovich, said in an online interview that 50 senior Russian officers were at the command center when he was attacked.

The fate of the Ukrainians at the extensive and besieged coastal steel plant in Mariupol, where Russia claims its forces have taken over the rest of the city, was not immediately clear. Earlier on Saturday, a Ukrainian military released a video that was reportedly filmed two days earlier, in which women and children hid underground, some for two months, said they longed to see the sun.

“We want to see a peaceful sky, we want to breathe fresh air,” a woman said in the video. “You just have no idea what it means for us to just eat, drink some sweetened tea. For us, that’s happiness.”

Russia has said it has taken control of several villages elsewhere in the eastern Donbass region and destroyed 11 Ukrainian military targets overnight, including three artillery depots. Russian attacks also hit settlements.

Associated Press reporters observed shelling in residential areas of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city; District Governor Oleh Sinehubov said three people had been killed. In the Luhansk region of Donbass, Governor Sergei Haidai said six people had died in the shelling of the village of Gorskoy.

In Slavyansk, a town in northern Donbas, the AP saw two soldiers arrive at a hospital, one of whom was mortally wounded.

Sitting in a wheelchair in front of her damaged apartment in Slavyansk, 70-year-old Anna Direnskaya said: “I want peace.”

One of the many Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine, Direnskaya said she would like the Russians to understand that Ukrainians are not bad people and that there should be no enmity between them.

“Why is this happening?” she said. “I do not know.”

While British officials said Russian forces had not won a significant new position, Ukrainian authorities announced a national curfew before Easter, a sign of an end to the war and a threat to the whole country.

Mariupol was a key Russian target and gained great importance in the war. Completing its conquest will give Russia its biggest victory to date, after a nearly two-month siege led much of the city to smoldering ruins.

This will deprive Ukrainians of a vital port, free Russian troops for battle elsewhere, and create a land corridor to the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow took over in 2014. Russian-backed separatists control parts of Donbass.

An adviser to Ukraine’s presidential office, Alexei Arestovich, said Russian forces had resumed air strikes on the Azovstal plant and were also trying to storm it, apparently reversing the tactics. Two days earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered not to send troops, but to block the plant instead.

Ukrainian authorities estimate that about 2,000 of their troops are inside the plant, along with civilians hiding in its underground tunnels.

Earlier on Saturday, the Azov Regiment of the National Guard of Ukraine, which has members hiding in the plant, released a video of about two dozen women and children. Its contents cannot be verified independently. But if it’s authentic, it will be the first video testimony to what life was like for civilians trapped underground.

The video shows soldiers giving sweets to children who respond with punches. A young girl says she and her relatives “have seen neither the sky nor the sun” since leaving home on February 27.

Regiment Deputy Commander Svyatoslav Palamar told the AP that the video was shot on Thursday. The Azov Regiment has its roots in the Azov Battalion, which was formed by far-right activists in 2014 at the beginning of the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine and has drawn criticism for some of its tactics.

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 in the city.

Another attempt to evacuate women, children and the elderly from Mariupol failed on Saturday. Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to the mayor of Mariupol, said Russian forces had not allowed Ukrainian-organized buses to take residents to Zaporozhye, a city 227 kilometers (141 miles) northwest.

“At 11 a.m., at least 200 Mariupol residents gathered near the Port City shopping center, awaiting evacuation,” Andryushchenko wrote in the Telegram news release. “The Russian military approached the Mariupol residents and ordered them to disperse because there would be shelling now.”

At the same time, he said, Russian buses had gathered about 200 meters (yards) away. Residents who boarded them were told they were being taken to separatist-occupied territory and were not allowed to descend, Andryushchenko said. His account cannot be verified independently.

In the attack on Odessa, Russian troops fired at least six missiles, according to Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister.

“Residents of the city heard explosions in different areas,” Gerashchenko told Telegram. “Residential buildings were hit. One victim is already known. He burned in his car in the yard of one of the buildings.”

Zelensky’s press conference was held at a metro station in Kyiv, where he stopped at one point while a train was passing noisily. The subway system, which includes the deepest station in the world, attracted widespread attention at the beginning of the war, when hordes of people took refuge there.

Regarding the expected visit of US officials on Sunday, Zelensky said: “I believe that we will be able to obtain agreements from the United States or part of this armament package for Ukraine, which we agreed on earlier. In addition, we have strategic issues on security guarantees, which it is time to discuss in detail, because the United States will be one of those leaders of states for sure for our country. “

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Fish reported from Slavyansk, Ukraine. Associated Press journalists Mstislav Chernov and Felipe Dana in Kharkov, Ukraine, Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Inna Varenitsa in Kvov and Associated Press staff from around the world contributed to this report.

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