US officials to visit Kyiv amid call for heavy arms, Ukraine says

Kyiv-U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin will visit Kyiv on Sunday to bandy Ukraine’s call for more important munitions, two months after Russia’s irruption began.

The trip, blazoned by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday, would be the loftiest- position byU.S. officers since Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine onFeb. 24.
The White House has not verified any visit by Blinken and Austin. The State Department and Pentagon declined to note.
As Christians in Ukraine celebrated Orthodox Easter on Sunday, there was no end in sight to a war that has killed thousands of people, pulled millions more and reduced metropolises to debris. Ukraine said two children were among those killed in shelling on Sunday.
” Generally we’d come to our churches with Easter baskets. But now this is insolvable,”Serhiy Gaidai, governor of the eastern Luhansk region, wrote on Telegram, saying seven churches in the Luhansk region had been” crippled by Russian ordnance.”
Reuters couldn’t singly corroborate his report.
“We’re all induced that we won’t be destroyed by any crowd or wickedness,”Zelenskiy said in an Easter videotape communication from the- time-old Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, soliciting God would” give abidance to those who, unfortunately, would not see the return of their child from the front.”
He told a news conference on Saturday that addresses with hisU.S. callers would cover the” important, heavy munitions”Ukraine demanded and the pace of inventories that he said would be used to regain home.
Moscow, which describes its conduct in Ukraine as a” special military operation”, denies targeting civilians and rejects what Ukraine says is substantiation of atrocities, saying Kyiv offered them.
Ukraine said on Sunday that Russian forces were bombarding the sword works in Mariupol where Ukrainian protectors were holding out, days after Moscow declared palm in the southern harborage megacity and said it didn’t need to take the factory.
“The place where our civilians and service are located is shelled with heavy air losers and ordnance,” elderly Ukrainian presidential counsel Mykhailo Podolyak said on Twitter, calling for”a real Easter armistice in Mariupol”.
Fighting in Mariupol, the biggest battle of the conflict, has raged for weeks. Landing the megacity would link uppro-Russian secessionists who control corridor of the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk that make up the Donbas with the southern Black Sea promontory of Crimea, which Moscow seized in 2014.
Ukraine estimates knockouts of thousands of civilians have been killed in Mariupol and says civilians are still in the megacity. The United Nations and Red Cross say the mercenary risk is at least in the thousands.
Oleksiy Arestovych, an counsel to Zelenskiy, said colors in the giant Mariupol sword complex were trying counterassaults. Further than civilians are also in the factory, Ukraine says.
A new attempt to void civilians from Mariupol failed on Saturday, an assistant to the megacity’s mayor said.
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual head of Eastern Orthodox Christians worldwide, called for philanthropic corridors in Mariupol and other areas of Ukraine, where he said”an inexpressible mortal tragedy is unfolding”.
Ukraine’s service said Russian forces were continuing their descent in the east of the country to try to establish full control over Donetsk and Luhansk with attacks on both military and mercenary structure.
The governor of Donetsk, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said two children were killed by shelling in his area on Sunday.
Ukraine said its forces repulsed 12 attacks on Donetsk and Luhansk a day before, destroying four tanks, 15 armoured outfit units and five ordnance systems.
Reuters couldn’t singly confirm the reports.
British military intelligence said Ukrainian resistance had been strong, especially in Donbas, despite some Russian earnings.
” Poor Russian morale and limited time to reconstitute,re-equip and reorganise forces from previous attempts are likely hindering Russian combat effectiveness,”it said.
Russia said on Sunday its dumdums hit eight military targets overnight, including four arms depots in the northeast Kharkiv region and one installation in the Dnipropetrovsk region producing snares for the Ukrainian army.
Moscow had said on Saturday its dumdums destroyed a logistics terminal in the southern megacity of Odesa containing munitions supplied by the United States and European countries.