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Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Saturday said his country will invest $42 billion in India over the next five years in a deal that is expected to boost bilateral trade, Associated Press reported.

Kishida met his counterpart, Narendra Modi, in New Delhi during his maiden visit to India since assuming office. The two leaders held talks ranging from economy to security cooperation.

In a televised press statement, Kishida said the investment plan will bring huge benefits for several industries, from the development of urban infrastructure to green energy.

Kishida also said the two sides reaffirmed Japan and India’s commitment to strengthen security ties across the Indo-Pacific region and held discussions over the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.

“We discussed the situation in Ukraine. (The) Russian attack is a serious matter as it has shaken international norms,” he said, according to the Associated Press.

India says ties with Japan are key to stability in the region. The two nations, along with the United States and Australia, are members of the Indo-Pacific alliance known as “the Quad” that is countering China’s rising influence in Asia.

India is the only Quad member that has not condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It has refrained from taking sides and abstained from voting against Russia at the U.N. or criticizing President Vladimir Putin.

Japan, meanwhile, has imposed financial sanctions to isolate Russia, including export controls on high-tech products.

The Japanese investments in India touched $32 billion between 2000 and 2019, mainly in the automobile, electrical equipment, telecommunications, chemical, insurance and pharmaceutical sectors. Japan has also been supporting infrastructure development in India, including a high-speed rail project.

The bilateral trade between India and Japan for 2019-20 crossed $11.87 billion, according to government data. India’s exports from Japan amounted to $3.94 billion while India’s imports from Japan stood at $7.93 billion.

In September, the Quad leaders announced Japan would work with India on a $100 million investment in COVID-19 vaccines and treatment drugs, Associated Press reported.

Kishida will end his India visit on Sunday.

Russian forces pushed deeper into Ukraine’s besieged and battered port city of Mariupol on Saturday, where heavy fighting shut down a major steel plant and local authorities pleaded for more Western help,Associated Press reported.

The fall of Mariupol, the scene of some of the war’s worst suffering, would mark a major battlefield advance for the Russians, who are largely bogged down outside major cities more than three weeks into the biggest land invasion in Europe since World War II. 

“Children, elderly people are dying. The city is destroyed and it is wiped off the face of the earth,” Mariupol police officer Michail Vershnin said from a rubble-strewn street in a video addressed to Western leaders that was authenticated by The Associated Press.

Russian forces have already cut Mariupol off from the Sea of Azov, and its fall would link Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, to eastern territories controlled by Moscow-backed separatists. It would mark a rare advance in the face of fierce Ukrainian resistance that has dashed Russia’s hopes for a quick victory and galvanized the West. 

Ukrainian and Russian forces battled over the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, Vadym Denysenko, adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, said Saturday. “One of the largest metallurgical plants in Europe is actually being destroyed,” Denysenko said in televised remarks, according to the Associated Press.

The Mariupol city council claimed hours later that Russian soldiers had forcibly relocated several thousand city residents, mostly women and children, to Russia. It didn’t say where in Russia, and AP could not immediately confirm the claim. 

Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Ukraine’s president, said the nearest forces that could assist Mariupol were already struggling against “the overwhelming force of the enemy” or at least 100 kilometers (60 miles) away.

“There is currently no military solution to Mariupol,” he said late Friday. “That is not only my opinion, that is the opinion of the military.”

In Mykolaiv, rescuers searched the rubble of the marine barracks that was destroyed in an apparent missile attack Friday. The region’s governor said the marines were asleep when the attack happened.

It isn’t clear how many marines were inside at the time, and rescuers were still searching the rubble for survivors the following day. But a senior Ukrainian military official, who spoke to The New York Times on condition of anonymity to reveal sensitive information, estimated that as many as 40 marines were killed, which would make it one of the deadliest known attacks on Ukrainian forces during the war, Associated Press reported.

Ukrainian President Volodomir Zelenskyy has remained defiant, appearing in a video early Saturday that was shot on the streets of the capital, Kyiv.

Zelenskyy said Russia is trying to starve Ukraine’s cities into submission but warned that continuing the invasion would exact a heavy toll on Moscow. He also repeated his call for Russian President Vladimir Putin to meet with him to prevent more bloodshed. 

“The time has come to restore territorial integrity and justice for Ukraine. Otherwise, Russia’s costs will be so high that you will not be able to rise again for several generations,” he said.

Putin appeared Friday at a rally in Moscow where he lavished praise on his country’s military.

“We have not had unity like this for a long time,” Putin told the cheering crowd.

The rally took place as Russia has faced heavier-than-expected losses on the battlefield and increasingly authoritarian rule at home, where police have detained thousands of antiwar protesters. 

Estimates of Russian deaths vary widely, but even conservative figures are in the low thousands. Russia had 64 deaths in five days of fighting during its 2008 war with Georgia. It lost about 15,000 in Afghanistan over 10 years, and more than 11,000 in years of fighting in Chechnya.

The Russian military said Saturday that it used its latest hypersonic missile for the first time in combat. Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Kinzhal missiles destroyed an underground warehouse storing Ukrainian missiles and aviation ammunition in the western region of Ivano-Frankivsk, according to the Associated Press.

Russia has said the Kinzhal, carried by MiG-31 fighter jets, has a range of up to 2,000 kilometers (about 1,250 miles) and flies at 10 times the speed of sound.

Russia fired missiles at an airport near Lviv on Friday, a city where hundreds of thousands found refuge far from Ukraine’s battlefields, as Moscow tries to regain the initiative in its stalled campaign against Ukraine, Reuters reported.

US President Joe Biden was due to talk with Chinese president Xi Jinping later on Friday, in an attempt to starve Russia’s war machine by isolating Moscow from the one big power that has yet to condemn its assault.

More than three weeks since President Vladimir Putin launched an invasion to subdue what he calls an artificial state undeserving of nationhood, Ukraine’s elected government is still standing and Russian forces have not captured a single big city.

Russian troops have taken heavy losses while blasting residential areas to rubble, sending more than 3 million refugees fleeing. Moscow denies it is targeting civilians in what it calls a “special operation” to disarm its neighbour.

“Russian forces have made minimal progress this week,” Britain’s defence ministry said in a daily military intelligence update, according to Reuters.

“Ukrainian forces around Kyiv and Mykolaiv continue to frustrate Russian attempts to encircle the cities. The cities of Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and Mariupol remain encircled and subject to heavy Russian shelling.”

At least three blasts were heard near Lviv’s airport on Friday morning, with videos on social media showing large explosions and mushroom-shaped plumes of smoke rising.

Lviv’s mayor, Andriy Sadovy, said several missiles has struck an aircraft maintenance facility, destroying buildings but causing no casualties.

The city, in Western Ukraine near the Polish border, is hundreds of miles from Russia’s advance and has been one of the main destinations for Ukrainians forced to flee battle zones.

Russia has stepped up missile attacks on scattered targets in western Ukraine in recent days in what Ukrainian officials see as a bid to widen the conflict beyond areas where their troops are now bogged down, Reuters reported.

Russia has been intensively shelling eastern Ukrainian cities, especially Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv and Mariupol, a southern port under siege for three weeks where residents have been sheltering with no access to food or water.

One of those killed in Chernihiv was Jimmy Hill, 68, an American working in Ukraine as a university lecturer, trapped in the besieged city looking after his Ukrainian partner who was hospitalised with illness. He was gunned down by Russian snipers while waiting in a bread line, and his body was found in the street, his family said.

In his last Facebook post, he wrote that his partner was in intensive care. “Intense bombing! still alive. Limited food. Room very cold.”

Kyiv has so far been spared a major assault, even as long columns of troops bore down from the northwest and east, halted at the gates in heavy fighting that destroyed suburbs. Residents in the capital have endured nightly deadly missile attacks. In the latest, one person was killed when parts of a Russian missile hit a residential building. Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko said 19 people were injured including four children, according to Reuters.

The Election Commission has endorsed and published the election calendar for the local level elections.

According to the calendar, two days—April 24 and 25— have been fixed for the registration of candidates.

The final name of candidates would be published on April 28 after completing the procedures such as registration of complaints and investigation into the complaints.

Likewise, the candidates can withdraw the candidates on April 29. The final list of the candidates would be published on April 29 in the evening and distribute election symbols on April 30.

The voting would take place from 8 am to 5 pm on May 13.

The silence period will come into force from May 10, 24 hours before the election.