Kyiv, Ukraine (AP) – U.S. Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday night during a high -level visit to the U.S. capital by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, confirmed by a Ukrainian official, took place after Ukraine forced the West to take on more powerful weapons against Russia’s campaign. Donbass region in eastern Ukraine Where Moscow forces tried to expel the last Ukrainian troops in the damaged port of Mariupol.
“Yes, they are meeting the president. “We hope someone will decide for more help,” Oleksiy Arestovich, adviser to the Ukrainian president, told Russian lawyer and activist Mark Feigin on his YouTube program Feygin Live. The United States has not yet commented.
Prior to the session with Blinken and Austin, Zelensky said he was watching the Americans achieve results in both armaments and security guarantees.
“You can’t come to us empty -handed right now and we’re not just waiting for gifts or any kind of cake, we’re waiting for specific items and tools,” he said.
Zelensky’s last face -to -face meeting with a U.S. official was on Feb. 19 in Munich with Vice President Kamala Hari, five days before the Russian invasion. While the West has supplied Ukraine with military equipment, Zelensky has repeatedly stressed that his country needs heavier weapons, including long-range air defense systems and military aircraft.
With clear incentives for Ukraine, French election agencies have said President Emanuel Macron will win the re -election of the right -wing candidate Marine Le Pen. The result was praised by France’s allies in the EU as an encouraging sign of Ukraine’s stability and continued support. France has played a leading role in international efforts to punish Russia with sanctions and provide Ukraine with weapons systems.
Zelensky met with American officials, both celebrating the resurrection of Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox. Speaking from Kiev’s ancient Hagia Sophia, Zelensky, a Jew, stressed his importance for a country devastated by nearly two months of war.
“This day is a great celebration that gives us great hope and an unwavering faith that light will defeat darkness, good will defeat evil, life will triumph over death, and therefore Ukraine will surely win! he says.
However, the war cast a shadow on the celebrations. In the northern village of Ivanivka, where Russian tanks are still being built on the roads, Olena Koptil said: “Easter does not bring joy. I am crying tears. We will never forget how we lived.”
The Russian military said it hit 423 Ukrainian targets overnight, including fortified positions and concentrations of troops, as its warplanes destroyed 26 Ukrainian military facilities, including a factory. explosives and several artillery depots.
Unable to capture Kiev, the Russians intended to gain full control of the Eastern Industrial Center, where Moscow -backed separatists controlled some territory before the war.
Russian forces have launched new air strikes against the Mariupol steel plant, where about 1,000 civilians are fleeing along with 2,000 Ukrainian fighters. The Azovstal steel mill, where the defenders were confined, was the last corner of the resistance in the city, otherwise occupied by the Russians.
Zelensky said he stressed the need to evacuate civilians from Mariupol, including from the steel mill, in a conversation Sunday with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who later intends to talk to the Russian leader who Vladimir Putin.
Arestovich, Zelensky’s adviser, said Ukraine had offered to talk to Russia near the steel plant. Arestovich said in a telegram request message that Russia had not responded to the proposal, which included the creation of humanitarian corridors and the exchange of Russian POWs with fighters still in the factory.
UN Secretary -General Antonio Guterres will travel to Guterres in Turkey on Monday, followed by Moscow and Kiev. Zelensky said Guterres’ visit to Ukraine from Russia was a mistake.
“Because? Receive signals from Russia? What should we look for?” Zelensky said Saturday. “There are no corpses scattered on Kutuzovsky Avenue,” he said on one of Moscow’s main streets.
Mariupol has suffered bitter fighting since the beginning of the war due to its location in the Sea of Azov. Its acquisition would deprive Ukraine of a viable port, free Russian troops to fight elsewhere, and allow Moscow to create a land corridor on the Crimean peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.
An estimated more than 100,000 people in Mariupol – from a pre -war population of about 430,000 – were left with food, water or heat shortages. Ukrainian authorities estimate that more than 20,000 civilians have been killed. Recent satellite images showed what appeared to be mass graves to the west and east of Mariupol.
Children in the underground bunker receive Easter gifts in a video released on Sunday by the far -right Azov battalion, which belongs to Ukrainian forces at the Mariupol steel mill. The group’s deputy leader, Sviatoslav Palamar, said the video was taken at the factory.
A baby can be seen wearing a handmade cellophane diaper while people bathe on temporary hangers.
“Please help us,” a woman said in the video, crying and talking to world leaders. “We want to live in our city, in our country. We are tired of these bombings, of the constant air attacks on our land. How long is it? “
Another adviser to the president, Mikhail Podoliak, tweeted that the Russian army was attacking the factory with heavy bombs and artillery, while gathering forces and equipment for a direct attack.
Zelensky on Saturday accused the Russians of committing war crimes by killing civilians and building a “filter camp” near Mariupol for people trying to leave the city. He said Ukrainians – most of them children – were sent to areas occupied by Russia or to Russia itself, often in Siberia or the Far East.
Complaints cannot be verified independently. But Ukrainian MP Evgenia Kravchuk repeated them on ABC’s “This Week”.
“They removed these people to Mariupol – they put them in filter camps … this is something that can’t happen in the 21st century,” Kravchuk said.
Zelensky also said the recorded communications were recorded by Russian soldiers in Mariupol “while they were hiding traces of their crime”.
He stressed the death of a 3-month-old girl following a Russian missile attack on Saturday on the Black Sea port of Odessa. Ukrainian officials said the baby was among eight people killed when Russia fired missiles at Odessa.
Ukrainian news agency UNIAN reported on social media that the child’s mother Valeria Glodan and grandmother were also killed when the rocket hit a residential area. Zelensky promised to find and punish the culprits.
“The war started when this baby was 1 month old,” Zelensky said. “Can you imagine what’s going on? They are filthy dirt; There is no other word for it. “
For the attack on the Donbas, Russia reunited the troops it was fighting in Kiev and northern Ukraine. The British Defense Ministry said Ukrainian forces repulsed several attacks last week and “caused extensive damage to Russian forces”.
The spiritual leaders Orthodox Christians of the world And the Roman Catholics sought help from the suffering population of Ukraine.
From Istanbul, World Patriarch Bartholomew I said a “human tragedy” was happening. Bartholomew, considered the first equivalent of his Eastern Orthodox patriarchs, specifically mentioned “thousands of people surrounded by civilians in Mariupol, including civilians, including the wounded, the elderly, women and many children. “.
Pope Francis, who came out of the window facing St. Peter’s Square, has renewed its call for the Easter truce, calling it “a minimal and tangible sign of the desire for peace”.
___
Associated Press reporters Jessica Fish in Slovyansk, Ukraine, Mstislav Chernov and Felipe Dana in Kharkov, Ukraine, Yura Karmanau in Lviv, Kara Anna, Ina Varenitsia and Oleksandr Stashevsky throughout the week, and AP staff around the world .
Source: Huffpost
