Muristek
Kyiv, April 24
Russian forces in Ukraine tried to storm a steel plant housing soldiers and civilians in the southern city of Mariupol on Saturday in an attempt to crush the last pocket of resistance in a place of deep symbolic and strategic value to Moscow, Ukrainian officials said.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile, announced he would meet on Sunday in his nation's capital with the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the US secretary of defence, Lloyd Austin. The White House declined to comment.
Speaking at a news conference, Zelenskyy gave little detail about logistics of the encounter but said he expected concrete results—"not just presents or some kind of cakes, we are expecting specific things and specific weapons".
It would be the first high-level US trip to Kyiv since the war began on February 24. While visiting Poland in March, Blinken stepped briefly onto Ukrainian soil to meet with the country's foreign minister.
Zelenskyy's last face-to-face meeting with a US leader was on February 19 with Vice President Kamala Harris.
In attacks on the eve of Orthodox Easter, Russian forces pounded cities and towns in southern and eastern Ukraine.
A three-month-old baby was among eight people killed when Russia fired cruise missiles at the Black Sea port city of Odesa, officials said. Zelenskyy said 18 more were wounded.
"The war started when this baby was one month old. Can you imagine what is happening?" Zelenskyy said. "They are just bastards. ... I don't have any other words for it, just bastards."
The Ukrainian military said on Saturday it destroyed a Russian command post in Kherson, a southern city that fell to Russian forces early in the war.
The command post was hit on Friday, killing two generals and critically wounding another, the Ukrainian military intelligence agency said in a statement. The Russian military did not comment on the claim, which could not be confirmed.
Oleksiy Arestovych, a Zelenskyy adviser, said in an online interview that 50 senior Russian officers were in the command centre when it was attacked.