Sun 24 April 2022:
As violent clashes raged in the south and east of the country, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskky said that the US’ top diplomat and defense chief will pay their first visit to Kyiv since Russia’s incursion two months ago.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will discuss the types of weapons Ukraine requires during their Sunday visit, according to Zelenskyy.
“As soon as we have [more weapons], as soon as there are enough of them, believe me, we will immediately retake this or that territory, which is temporarily occupied,” the Ukrainian leader told a Saturday evening news conference.
Blinken and Austin’s travel arrangements have yet to be verified by the White House.
The State Department and the Pentagon both declined to comment.
Blinken and Austin’s reported travel comes after a string of European politicians’ visits to Kyiv, and as Russian soldiers continue to attack. This included missile attacks on Odesa, Ukraine’s southernmost city, which killed eight people, including an infant, according to Ukraine.
The number of those killed in the attack on Saturday could not be reliably verified. The most recent major attack on or around Odesa occurred in early April.
Ukraine says hundreds of its forces and about 1,000 civilians are holed up inside Mariupol’s Azovstal steel plant. Kyiv has repeatedly called for a ceasefire to allow civilians – many barely surviving with little or no access to food or water – to exit safely.
Mariupol’s capture is viewed as critical to Russia’s efforts to link the eastern Donbas region with Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula it annexed in 2014. For years, separatists supported by Moscow have controlled territory in the Donbas region.
Ukraine reports that tens of thousands of citizens have been killed in Mariupol, with another 100,000 still missing. Thousands of civilians have died, according to the UN and the Red Cross.
On Saturday, a further attempt to evacuate citizens failed, according to a spokesman for Mariupol’s mayor.
About 200 locals gathered at a designated evacuation site in Mariupol, but Russian forces “dispersed” them, according to Petro Andryushchenko, who added, “The evacuation was thwarted.”
Others, he alleged, had been told to board buses bound for Russian-controlled areas.
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