KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Senior U.S. officials promised Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hundreds of millions of dollars in new aid during the highest-level U.S. visit to Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion two months earlier, while Great Britain Britain said on Monday that Moscow has yet to make a significant breakthrough in its offensive in the country’s eastern industrial heartland.
In meetings with Zelenskyy in kyiv, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the United States had approved a $165 million ammunition sale for the Ukraine’s war effort, along with more than $300 million in foreign military funding.
The promises came on Sunday, the 60th day since the beginning of the invasion, when Ukraine pressed the West for more powerful weapons against Russia’s campaign in the Donbas region of eastern Ukrainewhere Moscow forces sought to dislodge the last Ukrainian troops from the battered port of Mariupol.
Britain’s Defense Ministry said on Monday that Ukrainian troops holed up in a steel plant in the strategic city were pinning down Russian forces and preventing them from joining the offensive in other parts of Donbas.
“Many Russian units remain fixed in the city and cannot be redeployed,” the ministry said in a statement posted on Twitter. “Ukraine’s defense of Mariupol has also exhausted many Russian units and reduced their combat effectiveness.”
The ministry added that Russia has so far only made “minor progress in some areas since it shifted its focus to fully occupying Donbas.”
“Without sufficient combat and logistical support enablers, Russia has yet to make a significant breakthrough,” the ministry said.
On the diplomatic front, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres was scheduled to travel to Turkey on Monday and then to Moscow and kyiv. Zelenskyy said it was a mistake for Guterres to visit Russia before Ukraine.
“Why? To deliver signals from Russia? What should we look for?” Zelenskyy said on Saturday. “There are no corpses scattered on Kutuzovsky Prospect,” he said, referring to one of Moscow’s main avenues.
In a push to support Ukraine, French President Emmanuel Macron handily won a second term on Sunday. on far-right rival Marine Le Pen, who had pledged to dilute France’s ties with the European Union and NATO. Le Pen had also spoken out against EU sanctions on Russian energy and had faced scrutiny during the campaign for her previous friendship with the Kremlin.
Macron’s victory was hailed by France’s EU allies as a reassuring sign of stability and continued support for Ukraine. France has played a leading role in international efforts to punish Russia with sanctions and is supplying weapons systems to Ukraine.
“We have a lot to do and the war in Ukraine reminds us that we are living through tragic times in which France must make its voice heard,” Macron told a cheering crowd at his victory speech.
Zelenskyy’s meeting with US officials, his first face-to-face talks with a senior US official since the Feb. 19 meeting in Munich with Vice President Kamala Harris, took place as Ukrainians and Russians observed Orthodox Easter. Speaking from kyiv’s former Saint Sophia Cathedral, Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, stressed his importance to a nation devastated by nearly two months of war.
“Today’s big holiday gives us great hope and unshakeable faith that light will defeat darkness, good will defeat evil, life will defeat death, and therefore Ukraine will surely win!” he said.
In northern Ukraine, on the Russian side of the border, a fire broke out early Monday at an oil depot, but the immediate cause of the fire in the oil storage tanks was not disclosed.
NASA satellites tracking fires showed something burning at coordinates corresponding to a Rosneft facility about 70 miles (110 kilometers) north of the Ukrainian border. Moscow has previously blamed Ukraine for attacks on Russia’s Bryansk region, which borders Ukraine.
Since failing to capture kyiv, the Russians have tried to gain full control over the Donbas, the industrial heart of the east, where Moscow-backed separatists controlled some territory before the war.
For the Donbas offensive, Russia has reassembled troops that fought around kyiv and in northern Ukraine. The British Ministry of Defense said Ukrainian forces had repelled numerous attacks in the past week and “inflicted a significant cost on Russian forces.”
In southern Donbas, in the strategic port city of Mariupol, a small group of Ukrainian troops continue to resist Russian forces at the Azovstal steel factory, a sprawling facility on the waterfront.
Mariupol has endured fierce fighting since the start of the war due to its location on the Sea of Azov. Its capture would deprive Ukraine of a vital port, free up Russian troops to fight elsewhere and allow Moscow to establish a land corridor to the Crimean peninsula, which Ukraine seized in 2014.
Over the weekend, Russian forces launched fresh airstrikes on the steel plant in an attempt to dislodge the estimated 2,000 fighters inside. An estimated 1,000 civilians are also sheltering in the building.
New satellite images from Planet Labs PBC, taken on Sunday, show destroyed buildings along the steel mill and smoke billowing from part of the facility. The ceilings have open holes; a soccer field has craters from incoming fire.
More than 100,000 people, down from the pre-war population of around 430,000, are believed to remain in Mariupol with little food, water or heating. Ukrainian authorities estimate that more than 20,000 civilians have been killed. Recent satellite images showed what appeared to be mass graves to the west and east of Mariupol.
Children in an underground bunker were seen receiving Easter gifts in a video released Sunday by the far-right Azov Battalion, which is among Ukrainian forces at the steel plant in Mariupol. The deputy commander of the group, Sviatoslav Palamar, said that the video was shot at the plant.
A small child is seen wearing homemade diapers made from cellophane and people are seen hanging clothes on makeshift hangers.
“Please help us,” a woman in the video said through tears, appealing to world leaders. “We want to live in our city, in our country. We are tired of these bombings, constant air raids on our land. How much longer will this continue?”
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Associated Press writers Yesica Fisch in Sloviansk, Ukraine, Mstyslav Chernov and Felipe Dana in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Yuras Karmanau and Jon Gambrell in Lviv, Cara Anna, Inna Varenytsia, and Oleksandr Stashevskyi in Kviv, and AP staff around the world contributed.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
David Keyton, Associated Press
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