KYIV (Dispatches) -- Ukraine was to ask U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin for more powerful weapons during an expected visit by the officials to Kyiv on Sunday.
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 trip by Blinken and Austin, announced earlier by Zelenskiy, would be the highest-level visit to Ukraine by U.S. officials since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the military operation in the country two months ago.
Moscow’s assault is now focused on the eastern Donbas region and the south of the country. With a semblance of normal life returning to the capital, several countries have reopened embassies in recent days and some residents who fled the fighting returned for Easter.
Ukrainian officials planned to tell Blinken and Austin of the immediate need for more weapons, including anti-missile systems, anti-aircraft systems, armored vehicles and tanks, Zelensky aide Igor Zhovkva told NBC News on Sunday.
The United States and NATO allies have shown growing readiness to supply heavier equipment and more advanced weapons systems. Britain has promised to send military vehicles and is considering supplying British tanks to Poland to free up Warsaw’s Russian-designed T-72s for Ukraine.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said after talks by phone with Zelensky that Ankara was ready to assist in negotiations with Russia. Zelensky said he discussed with Erdogan the need for the immediate evacuation of civilians from the southern city of Mariupol, the site of biggest battle of the conflict.
Russian forces are attempting to storm the Azovstal steel works in Mariupol by land, backed up by aerial and artillery bombardment, Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said.
“Russian troops are trying to finish off the defenders of Azovstal and more than 1,000 civilians who are hiding at the plant,” Arestovych wrote on Facebook.
Moscow has previously declared victory in the city and said it did not need to take the plant.
Capturing Mariupol would link pro-Russian separatists who control parts of the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk that make up the Donbas with the southern Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which joined Russia in 2014.
Ukraine estimates tens of thousands of civilians have been killed
in Mariupol and says 100,000 civilians are still in the city. The United Nations and Red Cross say the civilian toll is at least in the thousands.
The governor of Donetsk, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said two children were killed by shelling in his area on Sunday.
Volodymyr Tymoshko, police chief of the northeast Kharkiv region, said that three people, including a child, had been injured in Russian shelling in the town of Chuhuiv on Sunday.
Russian strikes on Saturday severed an arterial gas pipeline and caused a fire at an electricity substation, cutting gas supply to 5,500 people in Luhansk, local governor Gaidai said.
Ukraine said its forces repulsed 12 attacks on Donetsk and Luhansk a day earlier, destroying four tanks, 15 armored equipment units and five artillery systems.
British military intelligence said Ukrainian resistance had been strong, especially in the Donbas, despite some Russian gains.
Russia said on Sunday its missiles hit eight military targets overnight, including four arms depots in the Kharkiv region and one facility in the Dnipropetrovsk region producing explosives for the Ukrainian army.
Moscow said on Saturday its missiles destroyed a logistics terminal in the southern city of Odesa containing weapons supplied by the United States and European states.
Russia’s top state investigative body said it is investigating whether sabotage experts from the United Kingdom’s Special Air Service (SAS) have been deployed to western Ukraine.
Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency quoted a Russian security source as saying about 20 SAS members have likely been sent to the Lviv region. The SAS is an elite military force trained to conduct special operations, surveillance and counter-terrorism.
The UK has said it sent military trainers to Ukraine earlier this year to instruct local forces in using anti-tank weapons. But on February 17, a week before Russia-Ukraine war began, the UK said it had pulled out all troops except those needed to protect its ambassador.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in a phone conversation with the Ukrainian president, confirmed that Britain will supply more military equipment to his country.
“The Prime Minister confirmed that the UK is providing more defensive military aid, including protected mobility vehicles, drones and anti-tank weapons,” a readout of the call published by Johnson’s office said.
Johnson also confirmed that the UK would be reopening its embassy in Kiev next week, a move first announced yesterday.
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Turkish air space has been closed to military and civilian planes carrying troops from Russia to Syria after consultation with Moscow.