Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday that U.S. diplomats are returning to Ukraine this week and will first be based out of the western city of Lviv. 

Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the Biden administration’s 2023 budget request, Blinken said U.S. diplomats will evaluate from Lviv whether it’s safe to reopen the U.S. Embassy in the capital, Kyiv. He suggested that it is very possible the U.S. would make such a move. 

Speaking about his trip to Ukraine, he said: “In Kyiv, we saw the signs of a vibrant city coming back to life, people eating outside, sitting on benches, strolling. It was right in front of us. The Ukrainians have won the battle for Kyiv.”

Blinken also confirmed that Congress should expect a supplemental funding request for additional aid to Ukraine.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced Tuesday that the U.S. and its European allies have formed a “contact group” that will meet monthly to discuss the strategy for Ukraine to defeat Russia. 

Austin made the announcement in remarks at Ramstein Air Base in Germany during a conference with 40 other countries to discuss aid to Ukraine. 

“We have to move at the speed of war,” he said. “We’re here to help Ukraine win the fight against Russia’s unjust invasion and to build up Ukraine’s defenses for tomorrow’s challenges. ... Ukraine clearly believes that it can win. And so does everyone here.”

Austin said that Germany’s decision to send 50 Cheetah anti-aircraft systems to Ukraine is “significant” and that he expects Ukraine to eventually apply for NATO membership.

Sweden’s foreign minister has decried as “unjustified and disproportionate” a decision by Russian authorities to expel several Swedish diplomats.

Ann Linde vowed in a social media post that Sweden would respond “appropriately” to the expulsions of four Swedish diplomats, which Moscow announced Tuesday. Separately, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said three diplomats “from the Swedish Embassy in Russia” would be expelled.

Swedish news agency TT reported that three of the diplomats were based in Moscow, where the embassy is located, and that one was in St. Petersburg.

Linde wrote on Twitter: “By expelling Western diplomats, Russia is isolating itself internationally.”

Russia has generally sought to keep expulsions symmetrical to moves by European countries to kick out Russian diplomats over President Vladimir Putin’s military campaign in Ukraine.

Sweden expelled three Russian diplomats this month.

Ukrainian officials say the Russian military has hit a strategic bridge linking the southern Odesa region with neighboring Romania.

Oleksandr Kamyshin, the head of the state-run Ukrainian Railways, said the bridge across the Dniester Estuary where the Dniester River flows into the Black Sea was damaged in Tuesday’s missile attack by Russian forces. He said there were no injuries.

The strike has cut off the railway connection to areas of the Odesa region west of the estuary and Romania.

It comes after last week’s claim by a senior Russian military officer that Russia aims to take control of the entire south of Ukraine and build a land corridor to the separatist Transnistria region of Moldova, where tensions have escalated in recent days amid fears Moscow may be engineering a pretext for military action there.

WARSAW, Poland — Viktoria Pohrebna knew her pregnancy with twins was high risk. She went to regular doctor appointments, carefully managed her stress level and crafted a detailed birth plan so she would be ready for any scenario.

But when Russia invaded Ukraine, Pohrebna was forced to decide whether to stay in Kyiv and risk giving birth in a bomb shelter with limited access to doctors and medical supplies or leave her husband and home behind to deliver the babies safely in another country.

While no data is available yet, doctors in Poland say they are seeing higher rates of pregnancy complications, premature births and stillbirths among Ukrainian refugees due to severe physical and emotional stress and prolonged periods of limited access to health care.

Read the full story here.

Ukrainian officials are reporting more civilian deaths in various parts of eastern Ukraine as Russian forces step up attacks.

Luhansk Gov. Serhiy Haidai said three people died after Russian shells hit a residential building in the city of Popasna, which Russian forces have been trying to capture. Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko of the neighboring Donetsk region said two people were killed and six others wounded in his region, writing on social media that “Russians continue to deliberately fire at civilians and to destroy critical infrastructure.”

To the north in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, the regional governor, Oleh Synehubov, said shelling of civilian areas killed three people and wounded seven more. And further south, regional authorities in Zaporizhzhia said a missile strike killed at least one person and wounded another. Russian forces fired several missiles targeting one of the factories in the city, they said.

NBC News has not verified the number of people killed.

No country has taken more refugees per capita than Moldova, where people have opened their homes to Ukrainians.

But the country faces challenges, including growing Russian pressure.

Moldova is small, poor and terribly vulnerable to a hostile Kremlin. Now it is also struggling to shelter its swelling refugee population.

Read the full story here.