Ukraine’s Zelensky meets top US officials: Report

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with top US officials — Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin — on Sunday night. The diplomatic meet has been dubbed the highest-level visit to Ukraine since February 24, when Russia began its “special operation.”

Oleksiy Arestovych, the top presidential advisor to Zelensky, confirmed the meeting on Sunday in a televised interview, Associated Press reported.

It came as Ukraine pressed the West for more powerful weapons against Russia’s campaign in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, where Moscow’s forces sought to dislodge the last Ukrainian troops in the battered port of Mariupol.

“Yes, they’re meeting with the president. Let’s hope something will be decided on further help,” Arestovych said in an interview on Ukrainian TV.

Before the session, Zelensky said he was looking for the Americans to produce results, both in arms and security guarantees.

“You can’t come to us empty-handed today, and we are expecting not just presents or some kind of cakes, we are expecting specific things and specific weapons,” he said.

The visit would be the first by senior U.S. officials since Russia invaded 60 days ago. Blinken stepped briefly onto Ukrainian soil in March to meet with the country’s foreign minister during a visit to Poland. Zelensky’s last face-to-face meeting with a top US official was February 19 in Munich with Vice President Kamala Harris.

While the West has funneled military equipment to Ukraine, Zelensky has stressed repeatedly it needs more heavy weapons, including long-range air defense systems, as well as warplanes.

In an apparent boost for Ukraine, polling agencies said French President Emmanuel Macron would win reelection over far right candidate Marine Le Pen. The result was hailed by France’s allies in the European Union as a reassuring sign of stability and continued support for Ukraine. France has played a leading role in international efforts to punish Russia with sanctions and is supplying weapons systems to Ukraine.

Zelensky’s meeting with U.S. officials was set to take place as Ukrainians and Russians observed Orthodox Easter, when the faithful celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. Speaking from Kyiv’s ancient St. Sophia Cathedral, Zelensky, who is Jewish, highlighted its significance to a nation wracked by nearly two months of  war.

“The great holiday today gives us great hope and unwavering faith that light will overcome darkness, good will overcome evil, life will overcome death, and therefore Ukraine will surely win!” he said.

Still, the war cast a shadow over celebrations. In the northern village of Ivanivka, where Russian tanks still littered the roads, Olena Koptyl said “the Easter holiday doesn’t bring any joy. I’m crying a lot. We cannot forget how we lived.”

Victor Lobush of Kyiv said Ukraine needs more weapons and financial support, and for Western nations “not to buy even a drop of the Russian oil.”

“Actions, not words, are needed,” he said on Independence Square.

The Russian military reported hitting 423 Ukrainian targets overnight, including fortified positions and troop concentrations, while its warplanes destroyed 26 Ukrainian military sites, including an explosives factory and several artillery depots.

Most of Sunday’s fighting focused on the Donbas region, where Ukrainian forces are concentrated and where Moscow-backed separatists controlled some territory before the war. Since failing to capture Kyiv, the Russians are aiming to gain full control over the eastern industrial heartland.

Ukraine’s national police said two girls, aged 5 and 14, died in shelling in the town of Ocheretyne, part of the industrial region.

Russian forces launched fresh airstrikes on a Mariupol steel plant where an estimated 1,000 civilians are sheltering along with about 2,000 Ukrainian fighters. The Azovstal steel mill where the defenders are holed up is the last corner of resistance in the city, which the Russians have otherwise occupied.

Zelensky said he stressed the need to evacuate civilians from Mariupol, including from the steel plant, in a Sunday call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is scheduled to speak later with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Zelensky adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said Ukraine has proposed talks with Russia next to the sprawling steel mill. Arestovych said on the Telegram messaging app that Russia has not responded to the proposal that would include establishing humanitarian corridors and the exchange of Russian war prisoners for the fighters still in the plant.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres Guterres is scheduled to travel to Turkey on Monday and then Moscow and Kyiv. Zelensky it was a mistake for Guterres to visit Russia before Ukraine.

“Why? To hand over signals from Russia? What should we look for?” Zelensky said Saturday. “There are no corpses scattered on the Kutuzovsky Prospect,” he said, referring to one of Moscow’s main avenues.

Mariupol has seen fierce fighting since the start of the war due to its location on the Sea of Azov. Its capture would deprive Ukraine of a vital port, free up Russian troops to fight elsewhere, and allow Moscow to establish a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.

More than 100,000 people — down from a prewar population of about 430,000 — are believed to remain in Mariupol with scant food, water or heat. Ukrainian authorities estimate over 20,000 civilians have been killed. Recent satellite images showed what appeared to be mass graves to the west and east of Mariupol.

Mykhailo Podolyak, another presidential adviser, tweeted that the Russian military was attacking the plant with heavy bombs and artillery while accumulating forces and equipment for a direct assault.

During a Saturday address to the nation, Zelensky accused Russians of committing war crimes by killing civilians, as well as of setting up “filtration camps” near Mariupol for those trying to leave the city. He said the Ukrainians — many of them children — are then sent to areas under Russian occupation or to Russia itself, often as far as Siberia or the Far East.

“They have pulled these people from Mariupol — they are put to filtration camps … it’s sort of something that can’t be happening in the 21st century,” Kravchuk said.

Zelensky claimed that intercepted communications recorded Russian troops discussing “how they conceal the traces of their crimes” in Mariupol. He also highlighted the death of a 3-month old girl in a Russian missile strike Saturday on the Black Sea port of Odesa.

In attacks Saturday, Russian forces pounded cities and towns in southern and eastern Ukraine. The baby was among eight people killed when Russia fired cruise missiles at Odesa, Ukrainian officials said.

For the Donbas offensive, Russia has reassembled troops who fought around Kyiv and in northern Ukraine. The British Ministry of Defense said Ukrainian forces had repelled numerous assaults in the past week and “inflicted significant cost on Russian forces.”

“Poor Russian morale and limited time to reconstitute, re-equip and reorganize forces from prior offensives are likely hindering Russian combat effectiveness,” the ministry said.

The spiritual leaders of the world’s Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholics appealed for relief for Ukraine’s suffering population.

From Istanbul, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I said a “human tragedy” was unfolding. Bartholomew, considered the first among his Eastern Orthodox patriarch equals, cited in particular “the thousands of people surrounded in Mariupol, civilians, among them the wounded, the elderly, women and many children.”

Pope Francis, speaking from a window overlooking St. Peter’s Square, renewed his call for an Easter truce, calling it “a minimal and tangible sign of a desire for peace.”