Warsaw, Apr 13 (AP) A top aide to Poland's President Andrzej Duda says Duda and the presidents of the three Baltic nations have arrived in Ukraine, ahead of talks about material aid for country invaded by Russia.

Pawel Szrot, chief of Duda's staff, said Wednesday that Duda, “together with the presidents of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, is currently on the territory of Ukraine. They are travelling to Kyiv to meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.”

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For security reasons he gave no details.

Duda brings "symbolic support, with political support and for talks on material support", Szrot said, adding that all four countries are "extending support to Ukraine that is of humanitarian nature and not necessarily of humanitarian nature".

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These countries, all of which border Russia or its exclave of Kaliningrad, have been providing Ukraine with weapons that they call “defensive”.

Pictures of the four presidents getting on a train and then gathered around a table as they travel, have been posted on their social media.

In a twitter post, Estonian President Alar Karis said: "We are visiting Ukraine to show strong support to the Ukrainian people, will meet dear friend President Zelenskyy."

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Moscow: Russia says more than 1,000 Ukrainian troops have surrendered in the besieged southeastern port of Mariupol.

Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Maj-Gen Igor Konashenkov said 1,026 troops from the Ukrainian 36th Marine Brigade surrendered at a metals plant in the city.

Russian forces moved on Mariupol in late February and units in the city have been running low on supplies.

Konashenkov said that the 1,026 Ukrainian marines included 162 officers and 47 female personnel, and that 151 wounded received medical treatment.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych did not comment on the alleged mass surrender, but said in a post on Twitter that elements of the 36th Marine Brigade had managed to link up with other Ukrainian forces in the city as a result of a “risky maneuver”.

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Rome: Pope Francis says his contention shortly after he became pontiff in 2013 that a third world war “in pieces” was afflicting the globe is ever more actual. Francis writes in an essay published on Wednesday in Italian daily Corriere della Sera that he would never a thought a year ago, while on a pilgrimage in Iraq, that war would be raging in Europe.

Francis wrote that the many wars being fought throughout the world seem far away until “almost unexpectedly, war explodes near us. Ukraine was attacked and invaded”.

The pope also lamented that people's memories are short. “Yes, because if we had a memory, we would recall what our grandparents and our parents recounted to us, and we would feel the need for peace like our lungs need oxygen.”

Francis called war "a cancer that feeds itself by engulfing everything.” He decried that women, children and older adults are “forced to live in the belly of the earth to escape bombs.”

Francis said that the way to rip out “hate from the heart” is through "dialogue, negotiations, listening, diplomatic ability and creativity, long-ranged policies capable of constructing a new system of co-existence that isn't any longer based on weapons, on deterrence.” (AP)

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)