Ukraine will ask U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for more heavy artillery during an expected visit by the officials to Kyiv on Sunday as the Russian invasion enters its third month, Reuters reports.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said his country would overcome “dark times,” in an emotional address at Kyiv’s 1,000-year-old Saint Sophia Cathedral to mark Orthodox Easter as fighting in the east overshadowed the religious celebrations.
The travel by Blinken and Austin, which was confirmed earlier by Zelenskiy, would be the highest-ranking US official to visit Ukraine since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the attack on February 24.
No visit has been confirmed by the White House. The Pentagon and the State Department also refused to respond.
After forcing a Russian withdrawal from Kyiv, Moscow has refocused its offensive on the eastern Donbas area and the country’s south. With a sense of normalcy returning to the city, numerous nations have recently reopened embassies, and several inhabitants who had left the war have returned for Easter.
The governor of the Luhansk area in the Donbas, Serhiy Gaidai, claimed Easter festivities had been destroyed in his district, with seven churches “mutilated” by shelling. According to him, the Russian bombardment killed an indeterminate number of people.
Moscow, which refers to its efforts in Ukraine as a “special military operation,” denies targeting civilians and dismisses proof of crimes alleged by Ukraine, claiming Kyiv faked them to derail peace negotiations.
Churches in Central Europe were packed with Ukrainian refugees.
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