KYIV, April 24 (Agencies): US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin were set to visit Kyiv on Sunday to discuss Ukraine's call for more powerful weapons, two months after Russia's invasion began.
The trip, announced by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday, would be the highest-level by US officials since Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine on Feb. 24.
The White House has not confirmed any visit by Blinken and Austin. The State Department and Pentagon declined to comment.
As Christians in Ukraine marked Orthodox Easter on Sunday, there was no end in sight to a war that has killed thousands of people, uprooted millions more and reduced cities to rubble.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials said Russian forces killed at least eight people in missile strikes on the Black Sea port city of Odessa on Saturday - including a 3-month-old baby.
If Putin's forces were to take the port city of Odessa it would effectively cut Ukraine off from the Black Sea. Sea cargo makes up 70 per cent of all of Ukraine's imports and exports, with Odessa processing about 65 per cent of this, per Al Jazeera.
Russian forces claimed Saturday they had seized several villages in the eastern Donbas region. If they were to gain control of Ukraine's east and southeastern port city Mariupol it would create a land corridor to Crimea, which it annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine's interior minister, tweeted that Russian rockets had struck a military facility and two residential buildings in Odessa, killing the baby and others in the city on the eve of the Eastern Orthodox Easter.
Meanwhile, a fresh attempt to evacuate civilians from Mariupol was "thwarted" by Russian forces on Saturday, said Petro Andriushchenko, an aide to Mariupol's mayor.
Another report adds: Serhiy Gaidai, governor of the eastern Luhansk region, said Easter celebrations had been shattered by the conflict. He said with seven churches in his region had been "mutilated by Russian artillery". Reuters could not independently verify his report.
Pope Francis called for an Easter truce: "Stop the attacks in order to help the exhausted population. Stop," he said.
Zelenskiy said in an Easter video message from Kyiv's 1,000-year-old Saint Sophia Cathedral that Ukraine would not be defeated by "wickedness" and prayed that God returns happiness to children and brings solace to grieving mothers.
He had earlier said talks with his U.S. visitors would cover the "powerful, heavy weapons" Ukraine needed to retake territory and the pace of deliveries.
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 said it was considering supplying British tanks to Poland to free up Warsaw's Russian-designed T-72s for Ukraine.
