KYIV – In their first official visit to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion two months ago, the US’s top diplomat and defence secretary offered further military aid, including modern weapons, as well as the return of US envoys to Kyiv.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin met Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy and other top officials in Kyiv late Sunday after a train voyage from Poland in a display of Western support. find out more
According to US officials, the cabinet secretaries offered $713 million in fresh help to Zelenskiy’s government and other countries in the region who are concerned about Russian aggressiveness.
According to a US official, the meeting between the US team and Ukraine’s leaders lasted three hours, more than double the allocated time.
“We are impressed by the Orthodox Christians’ resilience in Ukraine in the face of President Putin’s cruel war of aggression,” Blinken said earlier on Twitter, as violence in the east overshadowed Orthodox Easter liturgical rituals.
According to Zelenskiy assistant Igor Zhovkva, Ukrainian officials drew up a list of armaments urgently needed from the US before Blinken and Austin’s visit, including anti-missile systems, anti-aircraft systems, armoured vehicles, and tanks.
The US and NATO partners have indicated a growing willingness to supply more modern weapons systems and heavier equipment. To free up Warsaw’s Russian-designed T-72s for Ukraine, Britain has agreed to transfer military vehicles and is considering delivering British tanks to Poland.
The high-level US visit emphasised the shift in the situation since Ukrainian soldiers beat off a Russian attack on Kyiv, bolstered with a significant supply of arms from the West.
Since the invasion began on February 24, Russia has failed to conquer any significant cities, and after failing to take Kyiv, it has concentrated its forces in the south and east, commencing an operation termed “the fight of the Donbas” by Zelenskiy.
Russia has only made limited progress in some regions of Donbas, according to Britain’s defence minister in a daily briefing on the fighting.
“Russia has yet to score a substantial breakthrough without appropriate logistical and combat support enablers in place,” it stated.
The report by British military intelligence was not immediately verified by Reuters.
Earlier, Zelenskiy vowed his country would overcome “difficult times” in an impassioned speech at Kyiv’s 1,000-year-old Saint Sophia Cathedral to commemorate Orthodox Easter.
Several nations have reopened embassies in recent days as a sense of normalcy returns to the city, and some people who escaped the conflict have returned for Easter.
In the coming weeks, US diplomats will return to Ukraine, and Washington will name a new ambassador.
“There’s no alternative for face-to-face engagement, and of course, being back in the nation has symbolic value,” a State Department official told reporters in Poland on condition of anonymity.
Russian missile strikes on an oil refinery and power facility in Kremenchuk, around 320 kilometres (200 miles) southeast of Kyiv, killed one person and injured seven others, according to the governor of the Poltava region.
Moscow, which refers to its efforts in Ukraine as a “special military operation,” denies targeting civilians and dismisses proof of atrocities, claiming that Kyiv faked them in order to derail peace talks.
According to The New York Times, the European Union is considering “smart measures” against Russian oil imports, which might include some type of oil embargo.
Pope Francis has urged for a cease-fire over Easter: “To assist the exhausted populace, put an end to the attacks. Please, halt “he stated
The spiritual authority of Eastern Orthodox Christians worldwide, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, has asked for humanitarian corridors in Mariupol and other areas of Ukraine, where “an unfathomable human tragedy is unfolding.”
Churches across Central Europe were packed with Ukrainian refugees.
“I pray that this nightmare in Ukraine stops soon so that we can return home,” said Nataliya Krasnopolskaia, one of more than 5 million Ukrainians thought to have fled the nation.
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On Sunday, Ukraine suggested a “special” session of talks with Russia over the fate of civilians and Ukrainian military still besieged in Mariupol, the conflict’s most important battleground. Moscow has yet to issue a public response.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan offered to assist in negotiations with Russia after speaking with Zelenskiy over the phone.
Russian forces attempted to raid the Azovstal steel mill, the last surviving Ukrainian stronghold in Mariupol, on Sunday, according to Ukrainian officials, who added that over 1,000 civilians are also sheltering there.
“We’re losing people; the situation is dire… we have a lot of them.”
Moscow had earlier declared victory in the city and stated that the steel plant was unnecessary.
Capturing Mariupol would establish a link between pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk, which make up the Donbas, and the southern Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014.
Thousands of civilians have been killed in Mariupol, according to Ukraine, and 100,000 civilians remain in the city. According to the United Nations and the Red Cross, the civilian death toll is in the thousands.
