As he prepared to meet with top US officials in the war-torn country’s capital, Ukraine’s president requested more powerful Western weapons. Russian soldiers focused their attacks on the east on Sunday, attempting to dislodge the last remaining Ukrainian troops in the damaged port city of Mariupol.
During a lengthy Saturday night news conference held in a Kyiv underground station, President Volodymyr Zelensky announced the scheduled visit of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. The White House has been silent on the matter.
Zelensky stated that he expects the Americans to deliver results in terms of both armaments and security guarantees. “You can’t come to us empty-handed today, and we’re expecting certain items and particular weaponry, not just presents or some kind of cake,” he stated.
This would be the first formal visit by senior US officials since Russia invaded Ukraine 60 days ago. During a visit to Poland in March, Blinken briefly visited Ukraine to meet with the country’s foreign minister. The last time Zelensky met with a US leader in person was on February 19 in Munich with Vice President Kamala Harris.
The conference was scheduled to take place as Ukrainians and Russians celebrated Orthodox Easter, the most joyous occasion on the Christian calendar, in which believers commemorate Jesus’ resurrection.
Zelensky, who is Jewish, spoke from the old St. Sophia Cathedral on Sunday, emphasizing the metaphorical significance of the occasion to a nation traumatized by nearly two months of the war.
“Today’s wonderful celebration offers us enormous optimism and unshakeable trust that light will triumph over darkness, good will triumph over evil, life will triumph over death, and so Ukraine will undoubtedly triumph!” he declared.
Even still, the war cast a pall over the festivities. Residents of war-torn rural areas embraced the day with a cautious attitude.
“How am I feeling, “Everyone is nervous,” Olena Koptyl said as she baked Easter bread in Ivanivka, a northern town where Russian tanks still littered the roadways.”I’m not looking forward to the Easter holiday. I’m sobbing uncontrollably. “How we lived cannot be forgotten.”
Earlier, during his nightly address to the country, Zelensky said that Russian forces in Mariupol were discussing “how they cover the traces of their crimes” on intercepted communications. The president also mentioned the loss of a 3-month-old girl who was killed in a Russian missile strike on the Black Sea port of Odesa on Saturday.
According to Zelensky, the military equipment provided by Western allies has been a major help so far, but he has also stated that Ukraine requires more heavy weapons, such as long-range air defense systems and warplanes, to counter Russian attacks.
Overnight, Russian jets attacked 423 Ukrainian targets, including defended positions and troop concentrations, while Russian warplanes destroyed 26 Ukrainian military locations, including an explosives factory and multiple artillery depots, according to Russian military reports.
The majority of the combat on Sunday took place in the eastern Donbas region, where Ukrainian forces are concentrated and where separatists supported by Russia once controlled some territory. The Russians are attempting to take full control of Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland after failing to capture Kyiv.
Russian forces have launched more airstrikes on a steel facility in Mariupol, where an estimated 1,000 civilians and 2,000 Ukrainian fighters are sheltering. The Azovstal steel mill, where the defenders are holed up, is the last bastion of resistance in a city otherwise overrun by the Russians.
A Ukrainian presidential adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, has proposed a limited Easter truce. He asked Russia to allow civilians to leave the facility and advised that discussions be held to arrange the soldiers’ evacuation.
According to Podolyak, the Russian military is bombarding the plant with heavy bombs and artillery while preparing personnel and equipment for a direct assault.
Because of its location on the Sea of Azov, Mariupol has been the scene of severe fighting since the beginning of the war. Its annexation would deprive Ukraine of a key port, freeing Russian soldiers to fight elsewhere and allowing Moscow to construct a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.
Moreover 100,000 people are reported to survive in Mariupol, down from a prewar population of around 430,000, with no food, water, or heat. Over 20,000 civilians have been killed, according to Ukrainian authorities.
This week’s satellite photographs revealed what seemed to be mass graves dug in areas west and east of Mariupol.
The Russians, Zelensky claimed, were committing war crimes by executing civilians and setting up “filtration camps” near Mariupol for individuals caught attempting to flee the city. Ukrainians are then moved to territories under Russian rule or to Russia itself, he claimed, sometimes as far as Siberia or the Far East. He claims that many of them are children.
The assertions could not be verified independently.
Russian military bombarded cities and towns in southern and eastern Ukraine on the eve of Orthodox Easter. According to Ukrainian officials, the 3-month-old baby was one of eight persons killed when Russia fired cruise missiles toward Odesa.
According to UNIAN, the infant’s mother, Valeria Glodan, and grandmother died after a missile hit a residential neighborhood, according to social media accounts. Zelensky promised to track out and punish the strike’s perpetrators.
“When this infant was a month old, the war began,” he continued. Can you picture what’s going on? “There are no other words for it; they are filthy scum.”
Russia has reassembled troops that previously fought around Kyiv and in northern Ukraine for the Donbas offensive. Ukrainian soldiers had resisted many assaults in the previous week, according to the British Ministry of Defense, and “inflicted a severe cost on Russian forces.”
“Russian combat efficiency is likely being hampered by low Russian morale and limited time to rebuild, re-equip, and reorganize forces from previous offensives,” the ministry said in an intelligence update.
The spiritual leaders of Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholics around the world have pleaded for help for Ukraine’s suffering people.
From Istanbul, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I described the situation as a “human tragedy,” citing “thousands of people surrounded in Mariupol, civilians, among them the wounded, the elderly, women, and many children,” according Bartholomew, who is considered the first among his Eastern Orthodox patriarch equals.
Pope Francis reiterated his plea for an Easter truce, calling it “a simple and tangible demonstration of a wish for peace,” speaking from a window overlooking St. Peter’s Square.
“To respond to the pain of the tired populace, the attacks must cease,” Francis remarked, without naming the attacker.
