UN Secretary Gen to meet Russian and Ukrainian Presidents

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks at the General Assembly 58th plenary meeting on the Russia-Ukraine conflict. File pic/AFP

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy next week as he steps up efforts to end the ongoing war in Ukraine. Guterres will visit Moscow, where on April 26 he will have a working meeting and lunch with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and will be received by President Vladimir Putin. The visit comes two months after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. "Next week, I will meet with President Vladimir Putin in Russia and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Ukraine. We need urgent steps to save lives, end the human suffering and bring about peace in Ukraine," Guterres tweeted. Following his visit to Russia, Guterres will also travel to Ukraine next week.

He will have a working meeting with Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and will be received by Zelenskyy on April 28, the UN Spokesperson's Office said Friday. Guterres will also meet with staff of UN agencies to discuss the scaling up of humanitarian assistance to the people of Ukraine. Earlier this week, Guterres had written to Putin and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to receive him in Moscow and Kyiv "to discuss urgent steps to bring about peace in Ukraine." Spokesperson for the Secretary-General, Stephane Dujarric, told that two separate letters were handed over to the Permanent Missions of the Russian Federation and Ukraine. "In these letters, the Secretary-General asked President Vladimir Putin to receive him in Moscow and President Zelenskyy to receive him in Kyiv. The Secretary-General said, at this time of great peril and consequence, he would like to discuss urgent steps to bring about peace in Ukraine and the future of multilateralism based on the Charter of the United Nations and international law," Dujarric said.

Russian forces attack steel plant

Oleksiy Arestovich, an advisor to the head of Ukraine's presidential office, said during on Saturday that the Russian forces have resumed air strikes on Azovstal and were trying to storm it. "The enemy is trying to completely suppress resistance of the defenders of Mariupol in the area of Azovstal," Arestovich said. His statement came two days after Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported to President 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.

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