Iran Press/Europe: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin are expected to visit Ukraine on Sunday in what would be the highest-level visit by an American delegation since the start of the war.
“They should not come here with empty hands,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said during a news conference in a subway station in Kyiv. “We are expecting specific things and specific weapons.”
The trip would mark two months since Russian forces invaded Ukraine, where fighting intensified in the country's southern and eastern parts.
Missile strikes killed at least eight people in the southern port city of Odessa, Ukrainian officials said.
In Mariupol, Ukrainian authorities accused Russian forces of striking the Azovstal steel plant, where many of the city’s remaining defenders are holed up.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that the Russian invasion of his country was just the beginning and that Moscow had plans to invade other countries, Reuters reported.
His words were in relation to the terms of a senior Russian military official quoted by Russian news agencies yesterday as saying that Moscow wants complete control of southern Ukraine and access to Transnistria, a breakaway Moldovan region with Russian troops.
This would cut off the entire Ukrainian coast and the entry of Russian forces hundreds of kilometers to the west, beyond the cities of Mykolaiv and Odessa.
At the same time, Zelensky confirmed that the allies were finally delivering weapons requested by Kyiv after France and Spain announced they had sent military equipment.
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