Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky met US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in Kyiv, his office said Sunday. It was the first meeting between Zelensky and US officials since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began on February 24. “The first step in winning is believing that you can win. And so they believe that we can win,” Austin told a group of journalists after the visit with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
“We believe that we can win, they can win if they have the right equipment, the right support,” Austin said.
United States diplomats will begin a gradual return to Ukraine this week, Washington’s secretary of state and defence chief said Monday, as they announced $700 million in military aid during their first war-time visit to Kyiv. The trip came as the invasion enters its third month, with thousands dead and millions displaced.
Ukraine has urged Russia to allow the evacuation of civilians holed up at the giant Azovstal steel plant, the last remaining Ukrainian pocket of resistance in the strategic Sea of Azov port. It also has pushed Russia to conduct talks on a safe exit for the Ukrainian defenders of the plant, but Moscow has stonewalled the demands. Zelenskyy said he and Erdogan also discussed the course of the negotiation process and possible security guarantees for Ukraine from Turkey and other nations.
Here are the latest updates from the Ukraine-Russia war:
• The United States wants Russia’s military capability weakened so that it cannot carry out another invasion, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Monday after returning from a trip to Kyiv. “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine,” Austin told a group of journalists after he and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
• Russian forces shot down two Ukrainian drones near the border overnight, a regional governor said Monday. “Today at 4:15 am Russian air defence crews shot down two Ukrainian drones” in the Rylsky district on the border with Ukraine, Kursk region governor Roman Starovoyt said on Telegram. “There are no casualties, injuries or damage. The situation is completely under control.”
• United States diplomats will begin a gradual return to Ukraine this week, Washington’s secretary of state and defence chief said Monday, as they announced $700 million in military aid during their first war-time visit to Kyiv. The trip came as the invasion enters its third month, with thousands dead and millions displaced.
• Blinken and Austin, during the first visit by high-level American representatives to Ukraine since Russia invaded, announced the gradual return of US diplomats to Ukraine starting “this week”, a senior state department official said, plus more than $700 million in additional direct and indirect military aid.
• A newly released video shows Ukrainian children in an underground bunker receiving Easter presents. The video was released Sunday by the far-right Azov Battalion, which is among Ukrainian forces at the Azovstal steelworks where soldiers and civilians have been holed up under a Russian attack. The group’s deputy commander, Sviatoslav Palamar, says the video was shot Sunday at the plant. One toddler is seen wearing homemade diapers made of cellophane. People are hanging laundry on makeshift hangers.
• Zelenskyy said on Sunday he discussed the evacuation of civilians from Mariupol in a call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Zelenskyy said on Twitter that he stressed the need for immediate evacuation of civilians from Mariupol, including Azovstal, and immediate exchange of blocked troops in Sunday’s call with Erdogan. He noted that the call came before Erdogan’s planned conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
• The Russian military says it has struck a Ukrainian explosives factory, several artillery depots and hundreds of other targets. Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Maj Gen Igor Konashenkov said Sunday that the Russian military used precision-guided missiles to destroy a factory making powder and explosives near Pavlohrad in the Dnipro region in central Ukraine.
• Switzerland has rejected two requests by Germany to export Swiss ammunition to Ukraine, citing the Alpine nation’s strict neutrality. The decision was first reported Sunday by Swiss weekly Sonntagszeitung.
• European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Sunday said Russia’s war in Ukraine was a stark reminder that the dependency on Russian fossil fuels is not sustainable, and she pitched for a deeper cooperation between India and the EU to expand the use of clean energy. On the first day of her two-day visit to India, von der Leyen went to the TERI Gram campus in Haryana and addressed an event at the headquarters of the International Solar Alliance (ISA).
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