Russia has again promised to open a humanitarian corridor for civilians to leave the besieged port city of Mariupol as the United States pledged more military aid for Ukraine amid continuing diplomatic efforts to stop Moscow's invasion, which has entered its third month.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced more than $700 million in additional direct and indirect military aid for Kyiv on the first visit by high-level American representatives to Kyiv since Russia invaded on February 24.
About half of the money will go to Ukraine, with the remainder to be split among NATO members and other regional allies.
In addition, Washington will sell $165 million worth of ammunition to Kyiv, said the American officials, who met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy immediately after their arrival in the Ukrainian capital late on April 24.
After the trip, which was confirmed only after the two had left Ukrainian territory, Blinken said Russia is failing in its war aims and “Ukraine is succeeding.”
The United States has sent some $4 billion in military aid since President Joe Biden's term began last year, and already announced a new $800 million aid package last week.
Blinken, speaking to reporters near the Polish-Ukrainian border, said he and Austin traveled by train from Poland into Ukraine.
He said the visit to Kyiv was an opportunity to directly demonstrate "our strong ongoing support for the Ukrainian government."
Austin, in turn, said the United States believes that Ukraine can win the war with Russia if it has "the right equipment."
"The first step in winning is believing that you can win. And so they believe that we can win," Austin told journalists.
"We believe that we can win, they can win if they have the right equipment, the right support," he said.
The White House said on April 25 that Biden also plans to nominate current U.S. ambassador to Slovakia, Bridget Brink, as the new ambassador to Kyiv, a post that has been officially unoccupied since 2019.
The Russian Defense Ministry said on April 25 that it would open a humanitarian corridor for civilians to evacuate from the besieged Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol.
Russian troops "from 14:00 Moscow time on April 25, 2022, will unilaterally stop any hostilities, withdraw units to a safe distance and ensure the withdrawal of" civilians, the ministry said in a statement.
But Ukrainian authorities said Russian forces launched missile and bomb strikes on Ukrainian positions in the Azovstal area.
The sprawling metalworks has remained the last bulwark of Ukrainian resistance in the strategic Sea of Azov port city.
Ukrainian officials have said that up to 1,000 civilians have sheltered in the maze of underground tunnels there. They have repeatedly urged Russia to offer them a safe exit, but previous attempts at organizing evacuations have failed repeatedly.
The head of Ukraine's railway service on April 25 said five stations in the central and western parts of the country have been hit by missile strikes.
"Russian troops continue to systematically destroy railway infrastructure. This morning, within an hour, five railway stations in central and western Ukraine came under fire," Oleksandr Kamyshin, the chairman of the railway, said on Telegram.
Meanwhile, Russia launched rockets at two towns in Ukraine's central Vinnytsya region on April 25, causing an unspecified number of deaths and injuries, regional Governor Serhiy Borzov reported.
"Today, the Vinnytsya region is once again under rocket fire (in) the towns of Zhmerynka and Kozyatyn. The enemy is attempting to hit critical infrastructure," Borzov said in a video released on the Telegram messaging app. Russia did not immediately comment on his remarks.
To Ukraine's north on the Russian side of the border, a fire erupted early on April 25 at an oil facility, but no immediate cause was given for the blaze in oil storage tanks.
NASA satellites that track fires showed something burning at coordinates that corresponded to a Rosneft facility some 110 kilometers north of the Ukrainian border. Moscow has previously blamed Ukraine for attacks on the Russian region of Bryansk, which borders Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Russia's Defense Ministry said its military struck Ukraine's Kremenchuk oil refinery with long-range missiles and hit military installations in Ukraine.
"The armed forces of the Russian Federation continue the special military operation in Ukraine," the ministry said.
"High-precision long-range weapons destroyed fuel production facilities at an oil refinery on the northern outskirts of the city of Kremenchuk, as well as petroleum-products storage facilities which fueled military equipment for Ukrainian troops," the ministry said.
However, the Russian statement could not be independently confirmed. The governor of Ukraine's Poltava region had said the Kremenchuk refinery near the Dnipro River was destroyed earlier this month.
Five civilians were killed and another five wounded in Donetsk on April 24, the besieged eastern region's Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said. Authorities also reported a death in northeastern Kharkiv.
Russian forces sought to capture Kyiv in the first weeks of the war, shelling parts of the capital and sending hundreds of thousands of residents fleeing the city.
The Kremlin then had Russian forces retreat after facing strong resistance, saying the first phase of the war was complete and that now it was refocusing its military campaign on capturing the Donbas in the east.
Britain's Ministry of Defense, though, said in a regular bulletin on April 25 that Moscow has only achieved "minor advances" since the strategy change.
"Without sufficient logistical and combat support enablers in place, Russia has yet to achieve a significant breakthrough," it said.
On the diplomatic front, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was scheduled to travel to Turkey on April 25 and then Moscow and Kyiv.
Zelenskiy said it was a mistake for Guterres to visit Russia before Ukraine.
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