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Russian forces in Ukraine tried to storm a steel plant housing soldiers and civilians in the southern city of Mariupol on Saturday in an attempt to crush the last pocket of resistance in a place of deep symbolic and strategic value to Moscow, Ukrainian officials said, Associated Press reported.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile, announced he would meet Sunday in his nation’s capital with the U.S. secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the U.S. secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin. The White House declined to comment. 

Speaking at a news conference, Zelenskyy gave little detail about logistics of the encounter but said he expected concrete results — “not just presents or some kind of cakes, we are expecting specific things and specific weapons.”

It would be the first high-level US trip to Kyiv since the war began Feb. 24. While visiting Poland in March, Blinken stepped briefly onto Ukrainian soil to meet with the country’s foreign minister. Zelenskyy’s last face-to-face meeting with a US leader was Feb. 19 with Vice President Kamala Harris, according to the Associated Press.

In attacks on the eve of Orthodox Easter, Russian forces pounded cities and towns in southern and eastern Ukraine. 

A 3-month-old baby was among eight people killed when Russia fired cruise missiles at the Black Sea port city of Odesa, officials said. Zelenskyy said 18 more were wounded.

“The war started when this baby was one month old. Can you imagine what is happening?” Zelenskyy said. “They are just bastards. ... I don’t have any other words for it, just bastards.” 

The Ukrainian military said Saturday it destroyed a Russian command post in Kherson, a southern city that fell to Russian forces early in the war.

The command post was hit on Friday, killing two generals and critically wounding another, the Ukrainian military intelligence agency said in a statement. The Russian military did not comment on the claim, which could not be confirmed.

Oleksiy Arestovych, a Zelenskyy adviser, said in an online interview that 50 senior Russian officers were in the command center when it was attacked, Associated Press reported.

The fate of the Ukrainians in the sprawling and besieged seaside steel mill in Mariupol, where Russia says its forces have taken the rest of the city, wasn’t immediately clear. Earlier Saturday, a Ukrainian military unit released a video reportedly taken two days earlier in which women and children holed up underground, some for as long as two months, said they longed to see the sun. 

“We want to see peaceful skies, we want to breathe in fresh air,” one woman in the video said. “You have simply no idea what it means for us to simply eat, drink some sweetened tea. For us, it is already happiness.” 

Russia said it took control of several villages elsewhere in the eastern Donbas region and destroyed 11 Ukrainian military targets overnight, including three artillery warehouses. Russian attacks also struck populated areas. 

Associated Press journalists observed shelling in residential areas of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city; regional Gov. Oleh Sinehubov said three people were killed. In the Luhansk area of the Donbas, Gov. Serhiy Haidai said six people died during the shelling of a village, Gorskoi. 

In Sloviansk, a town in northern Donbas, the AP witnessed two soldiers arriving at a hospital, one of them mortally wounded.

Sitting in a wheelchair outside her damaged Sloviansk apartment, Anna Direnskaya, 70, said, “I want peace.” 

One of many native Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine, Direnskaya said she wishes Russians would understand that Ukrainians are not bad people and that there should be no enmity between them, according to the Associated Press.

“Why is this happening?” she said. “I don’t know.” 

While British officials said Russian forces had not gained significant new ground, Ukrainian officials announced a nationwide curfew ahead of Easter Sunday, a sign of the war’s disruption and threat to the entire country. 

Mariupol has been a key Russian objective and has taken on outsize importance in the war. Completing its capture would give Russia its biggest victory yet, after a nearly two-month siege reduced much of the city to a smoking ruin. 

It would deprive Ukrainian of a vital port, free up Russian troops to fight elsewhere and establish a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow seized in 2014. Russia-backed separatists control parts of the Donbas. 

An adviser to Ukraine’s presidential office, Oleksiy Arestovich, said Russian forces resumed airstrikes on the Azovstal plant and were also trying to storm it, in an apparent reversal of tactics. Two days earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin had given an order not to send troops in but instead to blockade the plant. 

Ukrainian officials have estimated that about 2,000 of their troops are inside the plant along with civilians sheltering in its underground tunnels. 

Earlier Saturday, the Azov Regiment of Ukraine’s National Guard, which has members holed up in the plant, released the video of about two dozen women and children. Its contents could not be independently verified. But if authentic, it would be the first video testimony of what life has been like for civilians trapped underground there, Associated Press reported.

The United States congressional delegation led by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand paid a courtesy Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba on Saturday.

During the meeting, the two sides exchanged views on various aspects of Nepal-United States relations and cooperation, read a statement issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

On the occasion,Prime Minister Deuba thanked the United States Congress for its continued support to Nepal, including during the difficult times of the 2015 earthquakes and the recent COVID-19 pandemic.

Both sides underscored the importance of parliamentary interactions for the enrichment of the multidimensional Nepal-US friendship. Views were also exchanged on institutionalizing democracy and cooperation in climate change, the statement further read.

Earlier this morning, the visiting US delegation called on the Minister for Foreign Affairs Narayan Khadka at the latter’s office.

During the meeting, Minister Khadka appreciated the longstanding US cooperation to Nepal’s development endeavours and expressed hope that the visit by the US delegation to Nepal will contribute to further strengthening of the bilateral relations.

The US congressional delegation reaffirmed the commitment to working closely with Nepal on the matters of common interests. The matters related to agriculture and food security as well as Nepal’s role in the UN peacekeeping also featured during the conversation, the Ministry said.

“We can complete the project by the deadline if the government allocates sufficient funds and settles land acquisition-related disputes.” 

This has been the refrain of the Nepal Army, the official contractor of Kathmandu-Tarai Fast Track Road Project, at every press meet since it got the job on 11 Aug 2017. 

Over the years, the project has suffered numerous cost and time overruns, but the army hasn’t stopped repeating this excuse. The initial deadline was Sept 2021. But now it has been pushed to Jan 2025. Similarly, estimated project cost has gone up to Rs 213bn from the initial Rs 86bn. 

In its latest press meet held on Feb 22, the army insisted that the project was “on track despite some hurdles”. It also assured that work would pick up pace in the second half of 2022. 

The army aims for 21 percent overall progress by the end of this year. But with only 16.1 percent physical progress till date, experts doubt the goal will be achieved. In fact, some have even warned that the fast track could turn into another seemingly never-ending project, like the Upper Tamakoshi Hydropower Project and Melamchi Drinking Water Project. 

The 72.5km expressway, which will be the shortest route between Kathmandu and the Tarai, comprises 55.5km of road, three tunnels with a combined length of 6.41km, and several bridges measuring a total of 10.59km. 

Also read: Lack of fast track progress raises questions over Nepal Army’s credibility

Tunnel construction is among the most challenging and time-consuming parts of the project. The army has handed over the task to a pair of Chinese firms under two packages. 

The first, for the construction of Mahadevtar Tunnel, was given to China State Construction Engineering Corporation Ltd. The second package for Dhedra & Lendanda Tunnels went to Poly Changda Engineering Co. Ltd. But the Public Procurement Committee of Parliament says these contracts were issued by breaching the country’s procurement regulations. 

Altogether 22 companies had expressed interest for the second package contract, but the army shortlisted only one of them—Poly Changda Engineering. Procurement regulations say more than one bidder must be shortlisted. 

The parliamentary committee’s direction to cancel the contract and call for a fresh bid was not heeded by the army. 

Questions were also raised over the selection of China State Construction Engineering for the first package of the tunnel deal, as the company had not made it past the pre-qualification bidding phase. 

Pre-qualification is the second phase of the bidding process where companies are shortlisted based on the strength of their technical documents. The third phase is where the shortlisted firms present their financial proposal and the project goes to the one that quotes the lowest price.

Also read: What if… the fast track project was completed on time?

The army has been accused of brazenly disregarding standard procurement practice while selecting these two Chinese companies.  

Earlier in 2019, the army had also courted controversy for allegedly leaking the evaluation criteria for the selection of consulting firms to potential bidders. The decision to select six international companies was eventually scrapped over the leak, which the army termed a “technical error”. 

Similarly, a government review committee in 2020 had opened an investigation after the army was accused of unduly favoring South Korea-based Yooshin Engineering Corporation while selecting a design and supervision consultant for the expressway. Later that same year, the Korean firm was blacklisted by the World Bank Group for fraudulent practices in an aviation project in Vanuatu. But Yooshin Engineering is still associated with the fast track. 

Those closely following the project say the army’s works thus far offer little assurance of the expressway’s timely and cost-effective completion. 

Bharat Kumar Shah, chairman of the parliament’s Public Accounts Committee, says the project would have been completed on time had the army listened to the committee. 

“We had asked the Nepal Army to halt bridge and tunnel works following discrepancies in bidding, but it simply brushed aside our directive,” says Shah. “Had the army listened to us, a more capable company would have gotten the project and it could have been completed on time.” 

There are still elements of the fast track, mainly bridge construction, that the army is yet to invite bids for. 

Also read: Army veers off the environment track

Semanta Dahal, a lawyer and researcher, says the project won’t get the desired momentum until the remaining bids are called. He also stresses the need for procurement transparency. 

Tulsi Prasad Sitaula, a former government secretary, agrees. He says the project will miss its deadline if international contractors are not selected on time.

“The deadline could be pushed back by at least another year if there are more delays,” he says. 

The army, meanwhile, says that should the project get delayed, it won’t be because of its fault.  

Brig. Gen. Bikash Pokharel, the project head, says the government has not allocated enough budget. 

The year the fast track was handed over to the army, the government at the time had allocated Rs 1.35bn. Subsequent governments then earmarked Rs 8.6bn, Rs 5.97bn, Rs 4.46bn, and Rs 8.93bn respectively. To date, the army has only received Rs 25.4bn—and it requires almost Rs 63bn annually hereon in for timely completion. 

Hence the army’s contention that the expressway is not getting enough budget is not unfounded. 

Experts worry the more the project is delayed, the more the costs will rise. The National Planning Commission has already projected the expressway cost to balloon to Rs 300bn even if it is completed by the Jan 2025 deadline.   

The completion of Kathmandu-Tarai fast track is important for Nepal to meet its development goals. For this, the country must invest 13 to 15 percent of its GDP in infrastructure over the next two decades. But it has consistently failed to allocate the required budget. 

Also read: Destroyer of civilization?

In 2020, the government needed to allocate around $1.3bn on roads and highways alone. The eventual allocation fell well short of that. The country’s annual infrastructure spending is expected to reach $5.6bn by 2025 and $7.5bn by 2030. It’s clear that the government cannot finance such expensive infrastructure projects. 

With elections of all three tiers of government approaching and the country staring at a possible economic crisis, some observers already doubt the project’s feasibility. 

Govinda Raj Pokharel, a former NPC vice-chairman, says it is hard to believe the fast track will be completed on time, particularly in the current economic climate. 

“Construction materials need to be imported and with our foreign reserves depleting, the fast track’s fate hangs in the balance,” he says. 

There is also concern about the expressway’s feasibility. Separate feasibility studies by Japan and the Asian Development Bank had suggested the route could be underutilized, given the existence of many other road links between Kathmandu and the Tarai. 

Also, the estimated 90-minute travel time is applicable only for passenger buses and cars, not cargo trucks, which could take 5-7 hours to traverse the route.

Also read: What’s driving up land prices along the fast track?

A former government secretary says the expressway is not viable economically.

“The fast track cannot generate profit and will thus be a burden for the government,” he says. “The fast track also runs through an earthquake-prone area, presenting additional challenges.” 

The land acquisition and rezoning dispute in Khokana and Bungamati areas have also halted progress. The people of these two ancient Newa villages in Lalitpur district have long been protesting against the expressway, which, they fear, could destroy their culture and heritage. 

Moreover, the fast track is connected to other mega projects like Nijgadh International Airport, Outer Ring Road, dry ports, and other supporting highways. All their fates are tied to the expressway. 

But sluggish progress, ballooning cost, lack of transparency, and doubts about economic unviability threaten to turn the fast track into the proverbial white elephant.   

The fight for tickets for the May 13 local elections was starting to get ugly. In order to keep the ruling five-party coalition intact, it had to work out a consensual ticket-sharing formula. But none of the parties seemed ready to budge. Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s CPN (Maoist Center) was intent on retaining the mayor of Bharatpur, the country’s third most populous city (and Dahal did). Madhav Kumar Nepal’s CPN (Unified Socialist) was adamant that it should get to pick the mayoral candidate for Pokhara, the second most populous city (and Nepal did too). There was likewise a bitter dispute in the coalition over the pick of candidates for the mayor of Kathmandu, the most populous. It was the same story in Nepal’s other major settlements.

Competition is the essence of democracy. Yet political parties were fighting tooth and nail not over the competing visions or competencies of their proposed candidates. What top leaders rather wanted was to ensure that their yes-men got the top posts so that they could milk the local units for partisan benefits. Another interesting trend is of political parties trying to woo actors and entertainers to increase their mass appeal. CPN-UML, the main opposition, seems particularly keen on having recognized celebrities on board—for show if not for actual representation.

Both these trends suggest a high level of immaturity of Nepali politics. The Nepali electorate keeps voting along party lines even if the candidates in the fray are incompetent—whether or not they are pop culture celebrities. This in turn gives the parties the freedom to pick candidates as they please. This vicious cycle must be broken if we want effective and accountable governance.