WARSAW — US
President Joe Biden met top
Ukrainian ministers in an emphatic show of support
Saturday, as Russia signaled it may scale down its war aims after failing to
break Kyiv's resistance in a month of fighting and deadly attacks on civilians.
اضافة اعلان
Foreign Minister
Dmytro Kuleba and Defense
Minister Oleksii Reznikov made a rare trip out of Ukraine to meet with the US
leader, in a possible sign of growing confidence in their fight back against
Russian forces.
The talks discussed Washington's
"unwavering commitment to Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial
integrity," State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters.
Biden, who later met Polish President
Andrzej Duda, also stressed the "sacred commitment" to
NATO's
collective defense, in a clear reassurance to Ukraine's neighbors rattled by
the conflict.
The US president has been leading efforts
among Western allies to press Vladimir Putin to end his invasion of Ukraine,
branding the Russian president a "war criminal" over the assaults on
civilians.
Putin had sent troops into
Ukraine on
February 24, vowing to destroy the country's military and topple pro-Western
President Volodymyr Zelensky. However, his army has made little progress on
capturing key cities, and its attacks on civilians have become more deadly.
In a surprise statement, Sergei Rudskoi, a
senior Russian general, suggested the time had come for a considerably reduced
"main goal" of controlling Donbas, an eastern region already partly
held by Russian proxies.
The apparent scaling down of ambitions came
as a Western official reported that a seventh Russian general, Lieutenant
General Yakov Rezanstev, had died in Ukraine and that a colonel had been
"deliberately" killed by his own demoralized men.
Complicating
Moscow's challenges, invading
troops were facing a counteroffensive in Kherson, the only major Ukrainian city
under Russian control.
Zelensky pressed on with his relentless
diplomatic efforts to rally world leaders to his side, this time taking his
message to the
Doha Forum meeting in Qatar's capital.
He accused Russia of fuelling a dangerous
arms race by "bragging" about its nuclear stocks, and urged
Qatar to
help by preventing Moscow from deploying energy as a weapon.
"I ask you to increase the output of
energy to ensure that everyone in Russia understands that no one can use energy
as a weapon to blackmail the world," Zelensky said.
'Everybody's shooting'
Russia's far-bigger military continued to
combat determined Ukrainian defenders who are using Western-supplied weapons —
from near the capital Kyiv to
Kharkiv, the Donbas region, and the devastated
southern port city of Mariupol.
A humanitarian convoy leaving Mariupol,
including ambulances carrying wounded children, was being held up at Russian
checkpoints, a Ukrainian official said.
A buildup of several kilometers had formed
close to Vassylivka, in the region of Zaporizhzhia where the convoy was headed,
said Lyudmyla Denisova, in charge of human rights in Ukraine.
"The ambulances carrying wounded
children are also queuing. The people have been deprived of water and food for
two days," she wrote on Telegram, blasting
Russian troops for
"creating obstacles".
Authorities had said they fear some 300
civilians in Mariupol may have died in a Russian air strike on a theatre being
used as a bomb shelter last week.
The theatre was targeted despite the word
"children" being written large in Russian on the ground outside, so
as to be visible to pilots.
Russian forces hammering Mariupol's
out-gunned resistance consider the city a lynchpin in their attempt to create a
land corridor between the Crimea region, which
Moscow seized in 2014, and the
Donbas.
One Mariupol resident who managed to escape
the city, 33-year-old Oksana Vynokurova, described leaving behind complete
devastation.
"I have escaped, but I have lost all my
family. I have lost my house. I am desperate," she told AFP
after reaching the western city of Lviv by train.
"My mum is dead. I left my mother in
the yard like a dog, because everybody's shooting."
In Kharkiv, where local authorities reported
44 artillery strikes and 140 rocket assaults in a single day, residents were
resigned to the incessant bombardments.
Anna Kolinichyenko, who lives in a
three-room flat with her sister and brother-in-law, said they do not even bother
to head down to the cellar when the sirens go off.
"If a bomb drops, we're going to die
anyway," she said. "We are getting a little used to
explosions".
Russian forces have taken control of
Slavutych, the town where workers at the Chernobyl nuclear plant live,
detaining the mayor, regional Ukrainian authorities said.
But residents of the town were mounting
pro-Ukrainian protests, prompting the invading forces to fire shots in the air
and lob stun grenades into the crowd.
Kyiv said it was shortening a planned
35-hour curfew to just Saturday 8pm to Sunday 7am, as Britain's defense
ministry said Ukrainian counter-attacks were underway near the capital.
Counter-attacks
Russia's army had been predicted by some to
roll across Ukraine with little resistance.
But Putin's military has exhibited poor
discipline and morale, faulty equipment and tactics, as well as brutality
toward civilians, Western analysts say.
Amid heavy censorship,
Russian authorities
Friday gave only their second official military death toll since the start of
the invasion, at 1,351.
This is far below Western estimates, with
one senior NATO official saying between 7,000 and 15,000 Russian soldiers have
died.
Rudskoi's announcement of a pivot to the
battle for eastern Ukraine was accompanied by claims of success.
He said Ukraine's military has been severely
degraded and that Russia has not seized cities to "prevent destruction and
minimize losses among personnel and civilians".
But his reference to plans for a
"liberation" of the Donbas region could lay the groundwork for the
Kremlin to focus on an easier campaign that can be sold to Russians as a
victory.
Meanwhile, Ukrainians are mounting an
increasingly aggressive defense and in places taking back ground.
A Pentagon official said Ukrainian forces
were attempting to recapture Kherson, the only major city held by Russian
invasion troops.
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