Ukraine to call for heavy arms when top US officials visit Kyiv

KYIV: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin were set to visit Kyiv on Sunday to discuss Ukraine’s call for more powerful weapons, two months after Russia’s invasion began.

The trip, announced by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday, would be the highest-level by US officials since Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine on Feb. 24.

The White House has not confirmed any visit by Blinken and Austin. The State Department and Pentagon declined to comment.

As Christians in Ukraine marked Orthodox Easter on Sunday, there was no end in sight to a war that has killed thousands of people, uprooted millions more and reduced cities to rubble.

“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 the more than 5 million Ukrainians estimated to have escaped the country.

Zelenskiy said in an Easter video message from Kyiv’s 1,000-year-old Saint Sophia Cathedral that Ukraine would not be defeated by “wickedness” and prayed that God returns happiness to children and brings solace to grieving mothers.

He had earlier said talks with his US visitors would cover the “powerful, heavy weapons” Ukraine needed to retake territory and the pace of deliveries.

The United States and NATO allies have shown growing readiness to supply heavier equipment and more advanced weapons systems. Britain has promised to send military vehicles and said it was considering supplying British tanks to Poland to free up Warsaw’s Russian-designed T-72s for Ukraine.

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.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said after talks by phone with Zelenskiy that Ankara was ready to assist in negotiations with Russia. Zelenskiy said he discussed with Erdogan the need for the immediate evacuation of civilians from the southern city of Mariupol and an exchange of troops.

Russian forces are attempting to storm the Azovstal steel works in Mariupol by land, backed up by aerial and artillery bombardment, Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said on Sunday.

“Russian troops are trying to finish off the defenders of Azovstal and more than 1,000 civilians who are hiding at the plant,” Arestovych wrote on Facebook. He said on Saturday that troops in the steel complex were attempting counterattacks.

Moscow has previously declared victory in the city and said it did not need to take the plant.