KYIV — Making the first official US visit to Ukraine since Russia invaded two months ago, Washington’s top diplomat and its defence secretary pledged additional military aid, including advanced weapons, and a return of US envoys to Kyiv.
In a visit designed to show Western support, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin met Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy and other top officials in Kyiv late on Sunday (April 24), after a train journey from Poland.
US officials said the cabinet secretaries pledged new assistance worth $713 million (S$981 million) for Zelenskiy’s government and other countries in the region that are fearful of further Russian aggression.
The meeting between the US delegation and Ukraine’s leaders ran for three hours, or more than double the allotted time, a US official said.
“We are inspired by the resilience of Orthodox Christians in Ukraine in the face of President Putin’s brutal war of aggression,” Blinken said earlier on Twitter, as fighting in the east overshadowed religious celebrations of Orthodox Easter.
Some 320 kilometres southeast of Kyiv, Russian missile strikes on an oil refinery and power plant in Kremenchuk, killing one person and wounding seven, the governor of the Poltava region said.
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 to undermine peace talks.
The European Union is preparing “smart sanctions” against Russian oil imports, possibly some form of oil embargo, The Times reported on Monday, citing the European Commission’s executive vice president, Valdis Dombrovskis.
Pope Francis called for an Easter truce: “Stop the attacks in order to help the exhausted population. Stop,” he 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”.
Ukrainian refugees filled churches across central Europe.
“I pray that this horror in Ukraine ends soon and we can return home,” said Nataliya Krasnopolskaia, who fled to Prague from Odesa last month, one of more than 5 million Ukrainians estimated to have escaped the country.
Ukraine proposed on Sunday a “special” round of negotiations with Russia about the fate of civilians and Ukrainian troops still trapped in the southern city of Mariupol, the site of the biggest battle of the conflict. Moscow has yet to respond publicly.
After talking to Zelenskiy by telephone, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan offered to assist in negotiations with Russia.
Russian forces on Sunday again attempted to storm the Azovstal steel plant, the main remaining Ukrainian stronghold in Mariupol, Ukrainian officials said, adding that more than 1,000 civilians are also sheltering there.
Serhiy Volyna, commander of Ukraine’s 36th Marine brigade forces in Mariupol, said Russia was hitting the plant with air and artillery bombardments.
“We are taking casualties, the situation is critical… we have very many wounded men, (some) are dying … the situation is rapidly worsening,” Volyna said.
Moscow has previously declared victory in the city and said it did not need to take the steel plant.
Capturing Mariupol would link pro-Russian separatists who control parts of the 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 UN and Red Cross say the civilian toll is at least in the thousands.
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