Pelosi visits Kyiv to meet with Zelenskyy

LVIV, Ukraine — President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Moscow of waging “a war of extermination,” citing strikes against nonmilitary targets Sunday.

Zelenskyy said in his nightly address that Russian shelling had hit food, grain and fertilizer warehouses and residential neighborhoods in the Kharkiv, Donbas and other regions.

“The targets they choose prove once again that the war against Ukraine is a war of extermination for the Russian army,” he said.

He said Russia will gain nothing from the damage but will further isolate itself from the rest of the world.

“What could be Russia’s strategic success in this war?” Zelenskyy said. “Honestly, I do not know.”

KYIV, Ukraine — Four civilians were reported killed and 11 more were injured by Russian shelling in the Donetsk region Sunday, the Ukrainian regional governor said Sunday evening.

The deaths and seven of the injuries were in the northern city of Lyman, Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko wrote on Telegram. One person also died in the city of Bakhmut from injuries received in the Luhansk region, he said.

In the same post, Kyrylenko said that it was impossible to determine the number of victims in the bombed-out port city of Mariupol and the town of Volnovakha, which is controlled by pro-Kremlin separatists.

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshyuk said Sunday that the humanitarian operation will continue in Mariupol and that more than a hundred women, children and the elderly were evacuated from the territory of the Azovstal metallurgical plant during the first two days.

"As you know, hundreds of civilians remain blocked in Azovstal together with the defenders of Mariupol. The situation has become a sign of a real humanitarian catastrophe, because people are running out of water, food and medicine," she said. "No matter what the military situation around Mariupol, we will fight for each of our soldiers and civilians who remain in the city. The Mariupol humanitarian operation will continue until we achieve our goals — saving the lives of our citizens.”

KYIV, Ukraine — The City Council in the bombed-out southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol said Monday is the scheduled start date for a broad, U.N.-backed evacuation of its civilians, other than those sheltering at a steel plant.

The City Council also confirmed Sunday on Telegram that some civilians were being evacuated Sunday from the Azovstal steelworks, the last Ukrainian defense stronghold in Mariupol. City officials noted the support of the Red Cross and said the wider evacuation of the strategic port city was delayed by security concerns.

As many as 100,000 people are believed to remain in blockaded Mariupol, including up to 1,000 civilians who were hunkered down with an estimated 2,000 Ukrainian fighters beneath the Soviet-era steel plant. The plant is the only part of the city not occupied by the Russians.

KYIV, Ukraine — The Ukrainian army said a Russian offensive along a broad front in the country’s east has been stalling amid human and material losses inflicted by Kyiv’s forces.

The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said Sunday on Facebook that Russian troops were trying to advance in the Sloboda, Donetsk and Tauride regions but were being held back by Ukrainian forces who continue to fight village by village.

Separately, Ukrainian intelligence officials accused Russian forces of destroying medical infrastructure, taking equipment and denying medical care to residents in several occupied cities and towns.

In a Facebook post Sunday, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry claimed that ventilators and other equipment that had been provided since 2014 by international donors and the government of Ukraine were removed from a hospital at Starobilsk in the eastern Luhansk region.

The post alleged that tuberculosis patients were denied medical care in the Kharkiv region at Volchansk while several facilities were used to treat wounded Russian troops.

The claims could not be immediately verified.

Ukrainian officials also said Sunday that internet and cellular communications were cut in a large area in the Russian-occupied Kherson region and part of the Zaporizhzhia region, and they blamed Russian forces. The London-based internet monitor Netblocks said the Kherson region lost 75 percent of internet connectivity beginning Saturday evening.

DÜSSELDORF, Germany — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has pledged to continue to support Ukraine with money, aid and weapons, saying a pacifist approach to the war is “outdated.”

Speaking at a May Day rally in Düsseldorf, Scholz said: “I respect all pacifism, I respect all attitudes, but it must seem cynical to a citizen of Ukraine to be told to defend himself against Putin’s aggression without weapons.”

Scholz also warned that the war would have consequences for food supply, potentially leading “to a worldwide hunger crisis.”

Soaring food prices and disruption to supplies coming from Russia and Ukraine have threatened food shortages in countries in the Middle East and Africa and parts of Asia.

Ukrainian President Zelenskyy tweeted Sunday that about 100 people had been evacuated from Azovstal, and he touched on others being evacuated from the steel plant in Maripol.

Pope Francis has appealed again for a safe evacuation of Ukrainians trapped in the steel plant of Mariupol, saying he weeps thinking of their suffering and how their city has been “barbarously bombed and destroyed.”

Speaking Sunday during his traditional noontime prayer, Francis urged all the faithful to pray the Rosary every day in May for peace. He noted that May 1 begins the month Christians dedicate to Mary, the mother of God, for whom Mariupol is named.

He said: “Even now, even from here, I renew the request that safe humanitarian corridors be arranged for the people trapped in the steelworks of that city. I suffer and cry thinking of the suffering of the Ukrainian population, especially the weakest, the elderly and children.”

He noted the “terrible reports of children being expelled and deported” and the “terrible regression of humanity.”