Russian missiles hit civilian homes in Odessa ahead of Ukraine visit by US officials

Ukrainian officials on Saturday accused Russia of thwarting a fresh attempt to evacuate civilians from Mariupol and killing eight people in a strike on the Black Sea port of Odessa, all but burying hopes of a truce for Orthodox Easter.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said an infant was among those killed in the strikes that also wounded 18 people.

With the war poised to enter its third month on Sunday, Ukrainian authorities said “fierce battles” were raging in the east and the UN said nearly 5.2 million people had fled the country.

The country’s emergency services said a missile struck a 15-story residential building, in Odessa sparking a fire that took 90 minutes to extinguish.

“It was a terrifying night,” said Yelena, with black bags under tear-reddened eyes in Ukraine’s second city of Kharkiv, where residents said random Russian strikes could come at any hour, day or night.

Zelensky called for a meeting with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin “to end the war,” which began with a Russian invasion on Feb. 24.

“I think that whoever started this war will be able to end it,” Zelensky said, adding he was “not afraid” to meet the Russian leader.

The attack on Odessa came as Kyiv prepared for its first wartime visit from two top US officials.

The Sunday visit by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will come at a symbolic moment — on the day the war enters its third month.

It also comes as the situation in the shattered port city of Mariupol remains bleak. The latest of many attempts to evacuate civilians failed Saturday, and the situation facing an embattled unit of Ukrainian fighters sheltering in tunnels under a sprawling steel mill there appeared increasingly desperate.

A series of European leaders have already traveled to Kyiv to meet with Zelensky and underscore their support, but the United States — a leading donor of finances and weaponry — had yet to send any top officials.

Zelensky, who announced the visit, said he was ready to exchange Ukraine’s soldiers defending the city “in whatever format” to save “these people who find themselves in a horrible situation, surrounded.”

But he again stressed that Kyiv would abandon talks with Moscow if its troops in Mariupol were killed.

“If our men are killed in Mariupol and if these pseudo-referendums are organized in the (southern) region of Kherson, then Ukraine will withdraw from any negotiation process,” he said.

Zelensky also criticized a decision by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to visit Moscow on Tuesday, before heading to Kyiv.

“There is no justice and no logic in this order,” he said.

Around 200 residents gathered at an evacuation meeting point announced by Kyiv in Mariupol on Saturday but they were “dispersed” by Russian forces, city official Petro Andryushchenko said on Telegram, adding: “The evacuation was thwarted.”

Ukraine says hundreds of its forces and civilians are holed up inside a sprawling steel plant in Mariupol, and Kyiv has repeatedly called for a ceasefire to allow civilians to exit safely. But on Saturday a Ukrainian presidential adviser, Oleksiy Arestovich, said Russian forces had resumed airstrikes on the factory.

Further west, Russia said it had targeted a major depot stocking foreign weapons near Odessa.

The governor of Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region, Oleg Sinegubov, said on Telegram that Ukrainian forces had retaken three villages near the Russian border after “fierce battles” in which two people had been killed.

In nearby Lugansk, governor Sergiy Gaiday said shelling was “round the clock” and urged people near the front to “evacuate if you have the chance.”

Earlier, Gaiday said shelling was “round the clock” and urged people near the front to “evacuate if you have the chance.”

The latest fighting came a day after a senior Russian military officer announced the beginning of “the second phase of the special operation.”

“One of the tasks of the Russian army is to establish full control over the Donbas and southern Ukraine,” Major General Rustam Minnekaev said.

Russian forces, which withdrew from around Kyiv and the north of Ukraine after being frustrated in their attempts to take the capital, already occupy much of the eastern Donbas region and the south.

Minnekaev said the focus was to “provide a land corridor to Crimea,” which Russia annexed in 2014, and possibly toward Transnistria, a breakaway pro-Russian region of Moldova where the general claimed Russian-speaking people were “being oppressed.”

After changing their strategic focus to southern and eastern Ukraine, Russian forces left behind a trail of indiscriminate destruction around Kyiv, including in the commuter town of Bucha.

A United Nations mission to Bucha documented “the unlawful killing, including by summary execution, of some 50 civilians there,” the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said.

Russian forces had “indiscriminately shelled and bombed populated areas, killing civilians and wrecking hospitals, schools and other civilian infrastructure, actions that may amount to war crimes.”

Tania Boikiv, 52, said Russian troops took her husband from their home in Bucha, held him for two weeks, then beat him to death as they retreated.

“The most terrible thing in my life is that my husband, my loved one, is gone,” she told AFP. “I don’t know what could be worse.”

Also Saturday, Roman Starovoit, the governor of Russia’s region of Kursk, which borders Ukraine, said on Telegram that a Russian border post had been hit by Ukrainian mortar fire, although there were no casualties.