Some women and children have been evacuated from a steel plant that is the last defensive stronghold in the bombed-out ruins of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, while US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Ukraine's president in the country's capital in a show of American support.
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Russia's offensive in coastal southern Ukraine and the country's eastern industrial heartland has Ukrainian forces fighting village by village and more civilians fleeing airstrikes and artillery shelling as the war reaches their doorsteps.
Thousands of residents were believed to remain trapped with little food, water or medicine in blockaded Mariupol. The United Nations was working to broker an evacuation of as many as 1,000 civilians who were hunkered down with an estimated 2,000 Ukrainian fighters beneath a sprawling Soviet-era steel plant that is the only part of the city not occupied by the Russians.
Footage released early Sunday by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's office showed Pelosi in Kyiv with a congressional delegation that included representatives Jason Crow, Jim McGovern, Gregory Meeks and Adam Schiff. The visit was not previously announced.
"We believe that we are visiting you to say thank you for your fight for freedom," said Pelosi, who is second in line to the US presidency after the vice president and the highest-ranking American leader to visit Ukraine since the start of the war.
"We are on a frontier of freedom and your fight is a fight for everyone. Our commitment is to be there for you until the fight is done," Pelosi added.
Pelosi's office did not say when the meeting took place, but the light in the video and other details suggested the meeting took place Saturday. Members of Congress Barbara Lee and Bill Keating were also listed as being in the delegation, although it wasn't clear if they were in Kyiv.
The delegation was scheduled to hold a press conference in the Polish city of Rzeszow on Sunday.
Russian forces have embarked on a major military operation to seize significant parts of southern and eastern Ukraine following their failure to capture the capital. Mariupol is a major target because of its strategic location near the Crimea Peninsula, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014.
Russia's RIA Novosti news agency said Saturday that 19 adults and six children were brought out from the Azovstal steelworks, but gave no further details.
A top official with the Azov Regiment, the Ukrainian unit defending the plant, said 20 civilians were evacuated during a cease-fire, though it was not clear if he was referring to the same group. There was no confirmation from the UN
"These are women and children," Sviatoslav Palamar said in a video posted on the regiment's Telegram channel. He also called for the evacuation of the wounded: "We don't know why they are not taken away and their evacuation to the territory controlled by Ukraine is not being discussed."
Ukraine has blamed the failure of numerous previous evacuation attempts on continued Russian shelling.
UN humanitarian spokesperson Saviano Abreu said the world organization was negotiating with authorities in Moscow and Kyiv on evacuations from Mariupol, but he could not provide details of the ongoing effort "because of the complexity and fluidity of the operation."
Abreu would not confirm the video posted on social media purportedly showing UN-marked vehicles in Mariupol.
In his nightly video address late Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy switched to Russian to urge Russian troops not to fight in Ukraine, saying even their generals expect that thousands more of them will die.
The president accused Moscow of recruiting new soldiers "with little motivation and little combat experience" so that units gutted early in the war can be thrown back into battle.
"Every Russian soldier can still save his own life," Zelenskyy said. "It's better for you to survive in Russia than to perish on our land."
In other developments, Ukrainian Deputy Agriculture Minister Taras Vysotsky said in televised remarks that Russian forces have seized hundreds of thousands of tons of grain in territory under their control. Ukraine is a major grain producer, and the invasion has pushed up world prices and raised concerns about shortages.
In addition, a Russian rocket attack destroyed the airport runway in Odesa, Ukraine's third-most populous city and a key Black Sea port, the Ukrainian army said.
Getting a full picture of the unfolding battle in eastern Ukraine has been difficult because airstrikes and artillery barrages have made it extremely dangerous for reporters to move around. Also, both Ukraine and Moscow-backed rebels have introduced tight restrictions on reporting from the combat zone.
But Western military analysts suggested that the offensive in the Donbas region, which includes Mariupol, was going much slower than planned. So far, Russian troops and the separatists appeared to have made only minor gains in the month since Moscow said it would focus its military strength in the east.
Numerically, Russia's military manpower vastly exceeds Ukraine's. In the days before the war began, Western intelligence estimated Russia had positioned near the border as many as 190,000 troops; Ukraine's standing military totals about 200,000, spread throughout the country.
With plenty of firepower still in reserve, Russia's offensive still could intensify and overrun the Ukrainians. Overall the Russian army has an estimated 900,000 active-duty personnel. Russia also has a much larger air force and navy.
Hundreds of millions of dollars in military assistance have flowed into Ukraine since the war began, but Russia's vast armories mean Ukraine will continue to require huge amounts of support.
Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday that the lifting of sanctions imposed on Russia is part of peace talks with Ukraine, but senior Ukrainian negotiator Mykhailo Podolyak denied that this was the case.
"At present, the Russian and Ukrainian delegations are actually discussing on a daily basis via video-conferencing a draft of a possible treaty," Lavrov said in comments to China's official Xinhua news agency published on the Russian foreign ministry's website on Saturday.
"The talks' agenda ... includes, among other things, the issues of denazification, the recognition of new geopolitical realities, the lifting of sanctions, the status of the Russian language," he said, without elaborating.
But Podolyak was dismissive, saying Lavrov had not attended a single negotiating round, and that Ukraine did not need lessons in "denazification" or use of the Russian language from those who had attacked and occupied Ukrainian towns and cities.
Zelenskyy had previously said that "the issue of global international sanctions against the Russian Federation is not discussed at all" within the framework of the Russia-Ukraine negotiations … It is for all our partners, together with Ukraine, to decide what decisions should be taken on sanctions, and when."
Zelenskyy has insisted since the invasion began on Feb. 24 that Western sanctions on Russia need to be strengthened and cannot be part of negotiations.
Kyiv warned on Friday that the talks on ending Moscow's invasion, now in its third month, were in danger of collapse.
There have been no face-to-face peace talks since March 29, and the atmosphere has soured over Ukrainian allegations that Russian troops carried out atrocities as they withdrew from areas near Kyiv. Moscow has denied the claims.
Ukraine's Western allies have frozen around half of Russia's state gold and foreign currency reserves and imposed severe restrictions on trade with Moscow, hammering its economy and putting it on the brink of sovereign default.
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In related news, a Ukrainian businessman is supporting Ukraine's war efforts by turning scraps of wreckage from a downed Russian fighter plane into souvenir key fobs and selling them abroad.
Many of my friends told me that no one would ever pay $1,000 for a piece of metal," Iurii Vysoven, founder of "Drones for Ukraine," said. The next morning, I woke up and saw on my phone that $20,000-30,000 had been collected overnight. There is a constant flow of messages from people asking us questions and saying what an incredible idea this is and that they want to donate more.
The aircraft is a Russian Su-34 two-seater tactical fighter-bomber that the Ukrainian military says it shot down over the town of Borodianka, northwest of Kyiv, in early March when Russian forces were trying to capture and hold the area.
Ukraine's Defense Ministry had posted images of the wreckage.
After Russian troops withdrew and refocused their invasion on eastern Ukraine, Vysoven asked the region's defenders if he could have some of the wreckage, scattered over farmland.
The soldiers told him both the aircraft's pilots had been killed. Among the wreckage shown by the ministry was a helmet stenciled in Russian with the last three letters of a surname ending "–NOV", and an empty leather holster marked "Buryat" – the name of an ethnic group that lives in Siberia.
Vysoven, who works in advertising, uses oblong pieces about 10 centimeters (4 inches) long stamped out of fragments of fuselage, which are then machined, polished, and printed with information about the plane and a "thank you" to the buyer. Each piece is perforated to be used as a keyring and engraved with a unique serial number.
"This is a really unique gift to those who helped us," Vysoven said, adding that his dream was to soon see the day when his fund would no longer be needed.
"My dream is to win and for everyone to be safe," he said.
