KYIV, March 16, 2022 (BSS/AFP) - The United States is set to unveil a fresh
round of security assistance to Ukraine Wednesday, a White House official
said, as Western leaders faced mounting pressure to stop Russia's bombardment
of civilians and peace talks made halting progress.

  The official said President Joe Biden will on Wednesday unveil another $800
million worth of military aid, expected to include more of the anti-tank and
anti-aircraft missiles that have helped slow Russia's three-week-old invasion
to a crawl.

  The package will bring "the total (aid) announced in the last week alone to
$1 billion," said the official.

  The move will coincide with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's
landmark virtual address to the US Congress -- when he is expected to
intensify pleas for NATO allies to intervene directly to stop Russian
attacks.

  In a late-night video message, Zelensky urged his beleaguered compatriots
to fight on against Russia's vastly larger military, even as he suggested the
conflict would end in a negotiated settlement.

  "All wars end with an agreement," he said, pointing to a "difficult" but
"important" ongoing round of talks between representatives from Kyiv and
Moscow.

  "Meetings continue," he added. "As I am told, positions during the talks
now sound more realistic. But we still need time, so the decisions are made
in the interest of Ukraine."

  Recent days have seen an uptick in Russian strikes on civilian targets,
including in Kyiv and the besieged port city of Mariupol where there is a
critical lack of food, water and medicine.

  Some 20,000 residents of the southern city have been allowed to leave, but
exhausted, shivering evacuees speak of harrowing escape journeys and rotting
corpses littering the streets.

  One of them, Mykola, who asked not to give his full name, drove his wife
and two young children through a minefield to escape and to avoid Russian
checkpoints.

  "This is the first time I have been able to breathe in weeks," he said.

  The conflict has already sent more than three million Ukrainians fleeing
across the border, and a peaceful resolution still seems beyond reach.

  On Tuesday Russian President Vladimir Putin's military launched a series of
strikes on Kyiv that killed four people.

  The attack caused a fire that swept through one 16-storey housing block.

  "At 4:20 am everything was very thunderous, crackling. I got up, my
daughter ran to me with a question: 'Are you alive?'," Lyubov Gura, 73, told
AFP.

  - Peacekeepers? -

  Western military experts believe Russia is increasingly turning to air
bombardments after an initial ground invasion stalled -- and as possible
leverage in negotiations.

  "They have found that their ground operations are not succeeding very well
and where they are making gains they are at massive costs that are not
sustainable," Mick Ryan, a retired Australian major general, told AFP.

  "They have had to change to 'Plan C' -- which is bombard cities and
terrorise civilians in the hope that the Ukrainians will reach some kind of
political accommodation," he said.

  "What the Russians are doing is using our own humanity against us and
Zelensky's humanity against him."

  Zelensky earlier told Ukrainians they may need to put aside thoughts of
joining NATO. That was always a faint prospect, but one which Russia has
repeatedly cited as a justification for its invasion.

  Putin accused Kyiv of "not showing a serious commitment to finding mutually
acceptable solutions" according to the Kremlin's account of a call with EU
Council leader Charles Michel.

  The latest series of attacks coincided with the visit to Kyiv of a trio of
Polish, Czech and Slovenian leaders and the introduction of a 35-hour curfew.
The three countries have been among the most forthright in calling for a
tougher Western approach to Moscow.

  During the visit, Poland's Vice Premier Jaroslaw Kaczynski called for the
deployment of a NATO or other international peacekeeping mission "that will
be able to defend itself and that will operate on Ukrainian territory."

  Such appeals have so far received little support in the West, where there
is fear such moves could trigger a catastrophic war with nuclear-armed
Russia.

  Instead Western nations have opted to isolate Russia diplomatically and
economically.

  They have introduced crippling sanctions that have pushed Russia towards a
possible default on its debt, and forced Moscow out of many international
political and sporting forums.

  Facing expulsion from the Council of Europe, Russia on Tuesday said it
would pull out of the pan-European rights body.

  Ireland joined the condemnation of Moscow Tuesday, after French-Irish Fox
News cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski, and Ukrainian producer Oleksandra
Kuvshynova, were killed when their vehicle was struck by incoming fire
outside Kyiv a day earlier.

  "We condemn this indiscriminate and immoral war by Russia on Ukraine," said
Prime Minister Micheal Martin.

  The news came after the Ukrainian parliament's human rights chief said
three other journalists had been killed since the invasion began, including a
US reporter shot Sunday in Irpin.