(Reuters) – Authorities report multiple explosions in western and southern Ukraine as Russian forces claim near full control of the strategic southern port city of Mariupol.
FIGHTING
* Lviv mayor Andriy Sadoviy said there had been five missile strikes on the western city. Authorities also report explosions in the southern region of Dnipropetrovsk.
* Eighteen people have been killed and more than 100 wounded in shelling in the past four days in the northeast city of Kharkiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said late on Sunday.
* Russia said its troops had cleared most of Mariupol with only a small contingent of Ukrainian fighters left in the Azovstal steelworks.
POPE’S APPEAL
* Pope Francis, marking an “Easter of war” urged leaders to hear the people’s plea for peace and implicitly criticised Russia for dragging Ukraine into a “cruel and senseless” conflict.
DIPLOMACY, SANCTIONS
* Ukraine has completed a questionnaire that will form a starting point for the European Union to decide on its membership, the deputy head of President Zelenskiy’s office said.
* Ukrainian foreign minister Kuleba said there had not been any recent diplomatic communications between Russia and Ukraine at foreign minister level, adding the “dire” situation in Mariupol may be a “red line” in the path of negotiations.
ECONOMY
* President Zelenskiy spoke with the head of the IMF about financial stability and post-war reconstruction. Prime Minister Shmyhal is expected to attend the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings in Washington this week.
QUOTES
* “Our eyes, too, are incredulous on this Easter of war. We have seen all too much blood, all too much violence. Our hearts, too, have been filled with fear and anguish, as so many of our brothers and sisters have had to lock themselves away in order to be safe from bombing,” Pope Francis, in an address to about 50,000 people in St. Peter’s Square after a long Mass.
* “I just prayed today to stop crying,” said Evgeniya Lebedko of Bucha after a service in the town where many civilians were killed while it was occupied by Russian forces. “We have survived these horrors and we are constantly crying.”
(Compiled by Grant McCool, Robert Birsel, Alexandra Hudson)
