Kyiv (Ukraine) (AFP) - The United States’ top diplomat and defence chief were set on Sunday to make their first wartime visits to Kyiv since Russia invaded Ukraine two months ago, with fierce fighting casting a long shadow over Orthodox Easter.

The trip by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin comes as the war enters its third month, with thousands dead and millions displaced, and as Kyiv desperately sought relief for Ukrainians trapped in the battered city of Mariupol.

Several European leaders have already travelled to Kyiv to underscore their support for Ukraine, but the United States – a leading donor of finance and weaponry and a key sponsor of sanctions targeting Russia – had not sent any top officials.

Blinken and Lloyd’s arrival was set to coincide with Easter celebrations in the largely Orthodox country.

“Our souls are filled with fierce hatred for the invaders and all that they have done,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a statement marking the holiday. “Don’t let rage destroy us from within.”

The highly sensitive trip by two of President Joe Biden’s top cabinet members – details were kept closely under wraps – comes as Russian forces show no sign of easing their attacks. A missile strike Saturday on the southern city of Odessa killed eight people.

“Among those killed was a three-month-old baby girl,” Zelensky said. “How did she threaten Russia? It seems that killing children is just a new national idea of the Russian Federation.”

He accused Russia of being a terrorist state, one that has devastated the port city of Mariupol with weeks of unrelenting bombardment.

Yet, with thousands of Ukrainian fighters and civilians in Mariupol facing increasingly dire conditions, Kyiv invited Moscow to talks near the sprawling steel plant where they are holding out, Ukraine said Sunday.

Talks near the Azovstal works would provide a dramatic and symbolic backdrop, as the site is the last Ukrainian stronghold in the strategic port.

“We invited Russians to hold a special round of talks on the spot, right next to the walls of Azovstal,” said Oleksiy Arestovych, a Zelensky aide.

There was no immediate response from Russia. Its president, Vladimir Putin, had ordered his forces not to assault the plant, but Ukrainians say the attacks continue unabated.

- ‘Pause to save lives’ -

On Sunday, the United Nations’ Ukraine crisis coordinator Amin Awad called for an “immediate stop” to fighting in Mariupol to allow trapped civilians to leave.

“The lives of tens of thousands, including women, children and older people, are at stake in Mariupol,” Awad said in a statement.

“We need a pause in fighting right now to save lives.”

The call came a day after the latest attempt to evacuate civilians from Mariupol failed.

In a message posted on social media Sunday, Sviatoslav Palamar – deputy commander of the far-right Azov Regiment, which is sheltering in a warren of tunnels under the steel mill – said Russian forces continued to rain down fire on Azovstal.

“The enemy continues air strikes, artillery from the sea… enemy tanks continue to strike and infantry is trying to storm,” said Palamar.

Mariupol, which the Kremlin claims to have “liberated”, is pivotal to Russia’s war plans to forge a land bridge to Russian-occupied Crimea – and possibly beyond, as far as Moldova.

Amid the calls to halt the fighting in Mariupol, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said it was “extremely concerned” after a number of Ukrainian members were believed to have been arrested in pro-Russian separatist territories in the country’s east.

Several Ukrainian members, who stayed behind while others were evacuated, had been “deprived of their liberty”, the OSCE said on Twitter.

More than five million Ukrainians have fled the country, and millions of others have been displaced internally, officials say.

In the western city of Lviv, 32-year-old Tetiana Kasian – who had fled Mariupol – stopped to solemnly take in a wall of flowers memorialising the dead.

“I never thought that it would happen in Ukraine in the 21st century,” she said quietly. “I don’t know if I will see my parents” again.

- Easter Sunday -

Even as fighting raged on, Ukrainians took time to observe a solemn Easter.

Under the rain at a frontline position in the eastern town of Lyman, soldiers traded the usual patriotic salutation of “Glory to Ukraine!” for the ritual “Christ has risen!”

“Truly risen!” came the reply.

Around 50 civilians gathered in the town’s small Orthodox church. Artillery fire could be heard as they prayed.

“If we make the wrong choices, then darkness will ruin us, as darkness is destroying us during this war,” the priest said in his sermon.

Elsewhere on the frontline, in the eastern city of Severodonetsk, Ukrainian troops had hidden their small stock of supplies, including Easter treats, under a bridge after Russian mortar rounds struck overnight.

Next to the Kalashnikovs were Coke bottles and cereal bars, as well as icing-covered Easter breads sprinkled with colourful sugar beads.

While others have fled the battered country, some Ukrainians have stayed in place – either bound to the land, too old or ill to travel, or simply lacking other options.

“I must work,” farmer Vassili Kushch, 63, said in the village of Mala Tokmachka in southern Ukraine, standing near rubble left by a bomb. “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

His village, not far from the invisible line separating pro-Russian and Ukrainian forces, wakes up every night to rockets splitting the sky.

- Odessa missile attack -

The modest Easter celebrations came just a day after a missile struck a residential building in the Black Sea port of Odessa, killing eight people and wounding at least 18, according to Zelensky, who said five missiles hit the historic city.

“We will identify all those responsible for this strike; those responsible for Russia’s missile terror,” he said.

Russia’s defence ministry said it had targeted a major depot stocking foreign weapons near Odessa, attacks that upended the relative calm the city has enjoyed since the war began.

The latest fighting followed an announcement earlier this week from a senior Russian military officer who said Moscow aimed to take full control over the eastern Donbas region and southern Ukraine.

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