US officials to visit Kyiv amid call for heavy arms, Ukraine says

KYIV (REUTERS)  – US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin will visit Kyiv on Sunday (April 24) to discuss Ukraine’s call for more powerful weapons, two months after the Russian invasion began. 

The visit, announced by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday, would be the highest-level by US officials since Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine on Feb 24.

The White House has not confirmed any visit by Blinken and Austin. The State Department and Pentagon declined to comment.

As Christians in Ukraine celebrated Orthodox Easter on Sunday, there was no end in sight to a war that has killed thousands, uprooted millions and reduced cities to rubble. 

“I pray that this horror in Ukraine ends soon and we can return home,” said Nataliya Krasnopolskaia, who was spending Easter in Prague, one of the more than 5 million Ukrainians estimated to have fled the country.

“Usually we would come to our churches with Easter baskets. But now this is impossible,” Serhiy Gaidai, governor of Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region, wrote on Telegram. “Seven churches in Luhansk region have been mutilated by Russian artillery.”

Reuters could not independently verify his report.  

“We are all convinced that we will not be destroyed by any horde or wickedness,” Zelensky said in an Easter video message from the 1,000-year-old Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, praying God would “give endurance to those who, unfortunately, would not see the return of their child from the front.” 

He said on Saturday that talks with his US visitors would cover the “powerful, heavy weapons” Ukraine needed and the pace of supplies that he said would be used to retake territory.

 He did not specify what equipment he would ask for.

The United States and NATO allies have shown growing readiness to supply heavier equipment and more advanced weapons systems

Britain has promised to send military vehicles and said it was considering supplying British tanks to Poland to free up Warsaw’s Russian-designed T-72s for Ukraine.

Moscow, which describes its actions in Ukraine as a “special military operation”, denies targeting civilians and rejects what Ukraine says is evidence of atrocities, saying Kyiv staged them.  

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said after talks by phone with Zelensky that Ankara was ready to assist in negotiations with Russia, after earlier rounds of talks showed no sign of helping end the conflict. He also called for evacuating civilians from the devastated southern city of Mariupol.

Ukraine said Russia was continuing to bombard the Azovstal steel works in Mariupol where Ukrainian defenders were holding out, although Moscow previously declared victory in the city and said did not need to take the plant.

“The place where our civilians and military are located is shelled with heavy air bombs and artillery,” senior Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak said on Twitter, calling for “a real Easter truce in Mariupol”.

Fighting in Mariupol, the biggest battle of the conflict, has raged for weeks.

Capturing the city would link up pro-Russian separatists who control parts of the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk that make up the Donbas with the southern Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which Moscow seized in 2014. 

Ukraine estimates tens of thousands of civilians have been killed in Mariupol and says 100,000 civilians are still in the city.

The United Nations and Red Cross say the civilian toll is at least in the thousands. 

The United Nations Ukraine crisis coordinator, Amin Awad, on Sunday called for an “immediate stop” to fighting in Mariupol to allow the evacuation of trapped civilians in the battered city “today”.

“The lives of tens of thousands, including women, children and older people, are at stake in Mariupol,” Awad said in a statement.

“We need a pause in fighting right now to save lives.  “The longer we wait the more lives will be at risk. They must be allowed to safely evacuate now, today. Tomorrow could be too late.” 

Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Zelensky, said troops in the giant Mariupol steel complex were attempting counterattacks.

More than 1,000 civilians are also in the plant, Ukraine says.

A new attempt to evacuate civilians from Mariupol failed on Saturday, an aide to the city’s mayor said.  

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual head of Eastern Orthodox Christians worldwide, called for humanitarian corridors in Mariupol and other areas of Ukraine, where he said“an indescribable human tragedy is unfolding”.

Ukraine’s military said Russian forces were continuing their offensive in the east of the country to try to establish full control over Donetsk and Luhansk with attacks on both military and civilian infrastructure. 

The governor of Donetsk, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said two children were killed by shelling in his area on Sunday. 

Ukraine said its forces repulsed 12 attacks on Donetsk and Luhansk a day earlier, destroying four tanks, 15 armoured equipment units and five artillery systems.

Reuters could not independently confirm the reports.

British military intelligence said Ukrainian resistance had been strong, especially in Donbas, despite some Russian gains. 

“Poor Russian morale and limited time to reconstitute, re-equip and reorganise forces from prior offensives are likely hindering Russian combat effectiveness,” it said.  

Russia said on Sunday its missiles hit eight military targets overnight, including four arms depots in the northeast Kharkiv region and one facility in the Dnipropetrovsk region producing explosives for the Ukrainian army.

Moscow had said on Saturday its missiles destroyed a logistics terminal in the southern city of Odesa containing weapons supplied by the United States and European states.  Zelensky said eight people, including a 3-month-old child, were killed in the Odesa strike.

US President Joe Biden last week pledged an additional US$1.3 billion (S$1.78 billion) in weaponry and economic aid, adding to an US$800 million package announced last week that included heavy artillery for the first time, as well as additional helicopters.

The latest aid shipments will include dozens of howitzers, 144,000 rounds for the weapons and attack drones.

The US president said he would also send a formal request to Congress for more funding in order to keep up shipments of military equipment and weapons to Ukraine. Congressional leaders said they would begin considering the funding package as soon as next week.

Ukraine says it's already inflicted dramatic losses on Russia's military, including the sinking of its flagship Black Sea warship last week, and forced Moscow to retreat from an assault on Kyiv.

The Kremlin has not been transparent about Russian casualties in the war. Nato estimated last month that Russia had seen as many as 15,000 soldiers killed, with tens of thousands more wounded or captured.

Biden last month visited US troops stationed in Poland about an hour's drive from the Ukrainian border during a four-day trip to Europe but he did not cross into Ukraine.

The president previously alluded to staff concerns about security as the reason he did not enter Ukraine.