An Easter shattered by war was described in Ukraine on Sunday, with officials reporting "mutilated" churches and civilians killed by shelling during the Orthodox Christian celebration.
Despite the holy day, there was no end in sight to a conflict that has killed thousands of people, uprooted millions more and reduced cities to rubble.
"I pray that this horror in Ukraine ends soon and we can return home," said Nataliya Krasnopolskaia, who fled to Prague from Odesa last month, one of the more than five million Ukrainians estimated to have escaped the country.
No humanitarian routes were established out of the southeastern Ukrainian port city of Mariupol on Sunday, Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said, blaming Russian forces for not holding their fire. She said that the Ukrainian side would try again on Monday to establish safe passage out of the city.
An unspecified multiple number of civilians were killed by Russian shelling in the Luhansk region and Easter celebrations had been shattered by the conflict, local governor Serhiy Gaidai said.
In a sombre video address commemorating Orthodox Easter Sunday, he said: "Today, once again, civilians have died. Our compatriots. The (Russians) do not hold anything sacred."
He said seven churches in his region had been "mutilated by Russian artillery". Reuters could not independently verify his report.
Calls for Easter truce
Pope Francis called for an Easter truce: "Stop the attacks in order to help the exhausted population. Stop," he said.
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual head of Eastern Orthodox Christians worldwide, called for humanitarian corridors in Mariupol and other areas of Ukraine, where he said "an indescribable human tragedy is unfolding".
The governor of Donetsk, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said two children were killed by shelling in his area on Sunday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in an Easter video message from Kyiv's 1,000-year-old Saint Sophia Cathedral that Ukraine would not be defeated by "wickedness" and prayed that God returns happiness to children and brings solace to grieving mothers.
He had earlier said talks with United States visitors would cover the "powerful, heavy weapons" Ukraine needed to retake territory and the pace of deliveries.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin were set to visit Kyiv on Sunday to discuss Ukraine's call for more powerful weapons, two months after Russia's invasion began.
The trip, announced by Zelenskiy on Saturday, would be the highest-level by US officials since Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine on February 24th.
The White House has not confirmed any visit by Blinken and Austin. The State Department and Pentagon declined to comment.
More equipment
The US and Nato allies have shown growing readiness to supply heavier equipment and more advanced weapons systems. Britain has promised to send military vehicles and said it was considering supplying British tanks to Poland to free up Warsaw's Russian-designed T-72s for Ukraine.
Moscow, which describes its actions in Ukraine as a "special military operation", denies targeting civilians and rejects what Ukraine says is evidence of atrocities, saying Kyiv staged them to undermine peace talks.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said after talks by phone with Zelenskiy that Ankara was ready to assist in negotiations with Russia. Zelenskiy said he discussed with Erdogan the need for the immediate evacuation of civilians from the southern city of Mariupol and an exchange of troops.
Russian forces are attempting to storm the Azovstal steel works in Mariupol by land, backed up by aerial and artillery bombardment, Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said on Sunday.
"Russian troops are trying to finish off the defenders of Azovstal and more than 1,000 civilians who are hiding at the plant," Arestovych wrote on Facebook. He said on Saturday that troops in the steel complex were attempting counter-attacks.
Moscow has previously declared victory in the city and said it did not need to take the plant.
Capturing Mariupol, the site of biggest battle of the conflict, would link up pro-Russian separatists who control parts of the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk that make up the Donbas with the southern Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which Moscow seized in 2014.
Ukraine estimates tens of thousands of civilians have been killed in Mariupol and says 100,000 civilians are still in the city. The United Nations and Red Cross say the civilian toll is at least in the thousands.
Attacks and strikes
Ukraine said its forces repulsed 12 attacks on Donetsk and Luhansk a day earlier, destroying four tanks, 15 armoured equipment units and five artillery systems. Reuters could not independently confirm the reports.
British military intelligence said Ukrainian resistance had been strong, especially in Donbas, despite some Russian gains.
"Poor Russian morale and limited time to reconstitute, re-equip and reorganise forces from prior offensives are likely hindering Russian combat effectiveness," it said.
Russia said on Sunday its missiles hit eight military targets overnight, including four arms depots in the northeast Kharkiv region and one facility in the Dnipropetrovsk region producing explosives for the Ukrainian army.
Russian strikes on Saturday severed an arterial gas pipeline and caused a fire at an electricity substation, cutting gas supply to 5,500 people, Serhiy Gaidai, the governor of Luhansk region wrote on Telegram on Sunday.
Moscow said on Saturday its missiles destroyed a logistics terminal in the southern city of Odesa containing weapons supplied by the United States and European states.
Zelenskiy said eight people, including a 3-month-old child, were killed in the Odesa strike.
