C T Online Desk: Kyiv prepared on Saturday for its first wartime visit from two top US officials, as Ukraine accused Russia of killing eight people, including an infant, in a strike on the southern city of Odessa that all but buried hopes of a truce for Orthodox Easter.
The Sunday visit by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will come at a symbolic moment — on the day the war enters its third month — and with fierce battles continuing in the country’s east.
It also comes as the situation in the shattered port city of Mariupol remains bleak. The latest of many attempts to evacuate civilians failed Saturday, and the situation facing an embattled unit of Ukrainian fighters sheltering in tunnels under a sprawling steel mill there appeared increasingly desperate.
A series of European leaders have already traveled to Kyiv to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky and underscore their support, but the United States — a leading donor of finances and weaponry — had yet to send any top officials.
Asked by AFP to comment on the highly sensitive trip by two of President Joe Biden’s top cabinet members, the State Department declined.
Zelensky, who announced the visit, also issued a new call for a meeting with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin “to end the war.”
“I think that whoever started this war will be able to end it,” Zelensky said, adding he was “not afraid” to meet the Russian leader.
But he again stressed that Kyiv would abandon talks with Moscow if its troops in Mariupol were killed.
Zelensky also criticized a decision by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to visit Moscow on Tuesday, before heading to Kyiv.
