Zelensky announces Kyiv meeting with Secretary Of State Blinken, Defense Secretary Austin on Sunday

Ukraine’s president says he will meet Sunday in Kyiv with the US secretary of state and secretary of defence.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke of the plans Saturday during a press conference. He did not immediately share more detail about the visit from Antony blinken and Lloyd Austin.

The White House declined to comment on Saturday. The US State Department also declined comment.

Zelenskyy has for weeks urged Western allies to send Ukraine more weapons to counter the Russian invasion.

The announcement comes as many prominent politicians travel into Kyiv for meetings with Ukraine’s president as a show of support.

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, left, and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, right, are set to meet with the Ukrainian president in Kyiv on Sunday

Next week, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres is set to hold separate meetings with Zelenskyy in Kyiv and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

Earlier this month, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson traveled there in what he called ‘a show of solidarity with the Ukrainian people.’

On April 14, two Republican members of Congress, Senator Steve Daines, of Montana, and Representative Victoria Spartz, of Indiana, became the first US officials to visit Ukraine’s capital since the invasion started.

The news comes just a day after an adviser to Ukraine’s president said five people, including a three-month-old infant, were killed in a missile attack in the Black Sea port city of Odessa.

Ukraine presidential chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, provided the information Saturday.

An adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister earlier said Russian forces fired at least six cruise missiles at the city.

Anton Gerashchenko said in a Telegram post on Saturday that Ukrainian forces were able to shoot down several missiles, but at least one landed and exploded.

‘Residents of the city heard explosions in different areas,’ Gerashchenko wrote. ‘Residential buildings were hit.’

Meanwhile, Russian forces continue to attack a steel plant that is the last defense stronghold of Ukrainian forces in the strategic port city of Mariupol.

Oleksiy Arestovich, an adviser to the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, said during a briefing on Saturday that the Russian forces have resumed air strikes on Azovstal and were trying to storm it.

A man runs away from a destroyed building following shelling in the northern outskirts of Kharkiv on April 22, 2022

A Ukrainian soldier jumps of a destroyed Russian tank on the outskirts of the village of Mala Rohan, amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in Kharkiv region, Ukraine, April 20

Damaged buildings are seen among the ruins in Borodianka of Kyiv Oblast of Ukraine on Friday

‘The enemy is trying to completely suppress resistance of the defenders of Mariupol in the area of ​​Azovstal,’ Arestovich said.

Arestovich´s statement came two days after Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported to President Vladimir Putin that the whole of Mariupol, with the exception of Azovstal, had been “liberated” by the Russians.

Putin ordered the Russian military to not to storm the plant and instead to block it off in an apparent attempt to stifle the remaining pocket of resistance there.

Ukrainian officials have estimated that about 2,000 of their troops are inside the plant along with about 1,000 sheltering in the facility´s underground tunnels.