By DAVID KEYTON

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia unleashed a string of attacks against Ukrainian rail and fuel facilities Monday, striking crucial infrastructure far from the front line of its eastern offensive, which Britain said has yet to achieve a significant breakthrough.

Meanwhile, two fires were reported at oil facilities in western Russia. It was not clear what caused the blazes.

As both sides in the 2-month-old war brace for what could be a grinding battle of attrition in the country’s eastern industrial heartland, top American officials pledged more help to ensure Ukraine prevails.

In meetings with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv on Sunday, the American secretaries of state and defense said Washington had approved a $165 million sale of ammunition for Ukraine’s war effort, along with more than $300 million in foreign military financing.

“The strategy that we’ve put in place — massive support for Ukraine, massive pressure against Russia, solidarity with more than 30 countries engaged in these efforts — is having real results,” Blinken told reporters in Poland the day after the meeting.

“When it comes to Russia’s war aims, Russia is failing. Ukraine is succeeding,” he added.

Speaking Monday to top officials at the Prosecutor General’s office, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the U.S. and its allies have tried and failed to “split Russian society and to destroy Russia from within.”

When Russia invaded on Feb, 24, its apparent goal was a lightning offensive that would quickly take the capital and perhaps even topple the government in Kyiv. But the Ukrainians, aided by Western weapons, bogged Putin’s troops down and thwarted their push to Kyiv.

Moscow now says its focus in the eastern region of the Donbas, but one senior military official says it also wants to control southern Ukraine. While both sides said the campaign in the east has begun, it has yet to gather steam.

A small group of Ukrainian troops holed up in a steel plant in the strategic city of Mariupol are tying down Russian forces, and keeping them from being added to the offensive elsewhere in the Donbas, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said Monday.

Over the weekend, Russian forces launched fresh airstrikes on the steel plant in an attempt to dislodge the estimated 2,000 fighters inside. An estimated 1,000 civilians are also sheltering in the steelworks, and the Russian military pledged to open a humanitarian corridor Monday for them to leave.

Mariupol has endured fierce fighting since the start of the war because of its strategic location on the Sea of Azov. In addition to freeing up Russian troops, its capture would deprive Ukraine of a vital port and allow Moscow to establish a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.

But for now, the British Defense Ministry said that Russia has “yet to achieve a significant breakthrough” since shifting its focus to the Donbas. Ukrainian forces have repelled numerous assaults in the past week and “inflicted significant cost on Russian forces,” it said.

Instead, Russian missiles and war planes struck far behind the frontline of that offensive on Monday.

Oleksandr Kamyshin, the head of the state-run Ukrainian Railways, said five railway facilities in central and western Ukraine were hit early Monday, including a missile attack near the western city of Lviv.

Serhiy Borzov, the governor of Ukraine’s central Vinnytsia region, said there were casualties after rocket strikes targeting “critical infrastructure.” It was not clear if that referred to the attacks on the railways.

Russia also destroyed an oil refinery in Kremenchuk in central Ukraine, along with fuel depots there, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Monday. In all, Russian warplanes destroyed 56 Ukrainian targets overnight, he said.

Meanwhile, a major fire erupted early Monday at an oil depot in a Russian city about 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the Ukrainian border, Russia’s Emergencies Ministry said. No cause was given for the blaze.

The oil depot in Bryansk is owned by a subsidiary of the Russian state-controlled company Transneft, which operates the Druzhba pipeline that carries crude west to other European countries. It wasn’t clear if the depot was part of the pipeline infrastructure and whether the blaze could affect those deliveries.

The ministry said in a statement that the huge blaze damaged a depot containing diesel fuel. It noted that the region has enough diesel for 15 days.

A Russian news report said that another oil storage facility in Bryansk also caught fire early Monday, and the cause wasn’t immediately known.

Last month, two Ukrainian helicopter gunships hit an oil reservoir in Russia’s Belgorod region, which lies on the Ukrainian border, causing a fire.

In a video address Monday, Zelenskyy described his meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin as “encouraging and, importantly, effective.”

The Ukrainian leader added that they agreed “on further steps to strengthen the armed forces of Ukraine and meet all the priority needs of our army.” Earlier, he praised U.S. President Joe Biden for his “personal support.”

The three-hour meeting came Sunday, the 60th day since the start of the invasion, as Ukraine pressed the West for more powerful weapons against Russia’s campaign in the Donbas, where Moscow-backed separatists controlled some territory before the war.

With Russia’s shift in focus, Austin said Ukraine’s military needs are changing, and Zelenskyy is now focused on more tanks, artillery and other munitions.

Asked about what the U.S. sees as success, Austin said that “we want to see Ukraine remain a sovereign country, a democratic country able to protect its sovereign territory, we want to see Russia weakened to the point where it can’t do things like invade Ukraine.”

As Blinken and Austin left Ukraine, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was scheduled to travel to Turkey on Monday and then Moscow and Kyiv. Zelenskyy criticized Guterres for visiting Russia before Ukraine.

Blinken said he had spoken with Guterres on Friday ahead of the trip.

“Our expectation is that he’s going to carry a very strong and clear message to Vladimir Putin, which is the need to end this war now,” he said.

In a boost for Ukraine, French President Emmanuel Macron comfortably won a second term Sunday over far-right challenger Marine Le Pen, who had pledged to dilute France’s ties with the European Union and NATO. Le Pen had also spoken out against EU sanctions on Russian energy and had faced scrutiny during the campaign over her previous friendliness with the Kremlin.

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Associated Press journalists Yesica Fisch in Sloviansk, Ukraine, Mstyslav Chernov and Felipe Dana in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Yuras Karmanau and Jon Gambrell in Lviv, Cara Anna, Inna Varenytsia and Oleksandr Stashevskyi in Kyiv and AP staff around the world contributed.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

By MATTHEW DALY and JOSH BOAK

SEATTLE (AP) — President Joe Biden is taking steps to restore national forests that have been devastated by wildfires, drought and blight, using an Earth Day visit to Seattle to sign an executive order protecting some of the nation’s largest and oldest trees.

Old-growth trees are key buffers against climate change and provide crucial carbon sinks that absorb significant amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.

Biden’s order directs federal land managers to define and inventory mature and old-growth forests nationwide within a year. The order requires the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service to identify threats to older trees, such as wildfire and climate change, and develop policies to safeguard them.

The order does not ban logging of mature or old-growth trees, the White House said.

By signing the order on Friday, Biden can publicly reassert his environmentalist credentials at a time when his administration has been preoccupied by high oil and gasoline prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Gas costs have been a drag on Biden’s popularity and created short-term political pressures going into this year’s midterm elections, yet the Democratic president has been focused on wildfires that are intensifying because of climate change.

The measure is intended to safeguard national forests that been severely damaged by wildfires, drought and blight, including recent fires that killed thousands of giant sequoias in California. Redwood forests are among the world’s most efficient at removing and storing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and provide critical habitat for native wildlife and watersheds that supply farms and communities in the West.

Blazes so intense to kill trees once considered virtually fire-proof have alarmed land managers, environmentalists and tree lovers the world over — and demonstrated the grave impacts of climate change. A warming planet that has created longer and hotter droughts, combined with a century of fire suppression that choked forests with thick undergrowth, has fueled flames that extinguished trees dating to ancient civilizations.

A senior administration official noted that forests absorb more than 10% of U.S. annual greenhouse gases, while also providing flood control, clean water, clear air and a home to wildlife. The official insisted on anonymity to discuss details of Biden’s order before it was made public.

Biden’s ambitious climate agenda has been marred by setbacks, a year after he took office amid a flurry of climate-related promises. The president hosted a virtual summit on global warming at the White House last Earth Day. He used the moment to nearly double the United States’ goal for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, vaulting the country to the front lines in the fight against climate change.

A year later, his most sweeping proposals remain stalled on Capitol Hill despite renewed warnings from scientists that the world is hurtling toward a dangerous future marked by extreme heat, drought and weather.

In addition, Russia’s war in Ukraine has reshuffled the politics of climate change, leading Biden to release oil from the nation’s strategic reserve and encourage more domestic drilling in hopes of lowering sky-high gas prices that are emptying American wallets.

While Biden is raising fuel economy standards for vehicles and included green policies in last year’s bipartisan infrastructure law, the lack of greater progress casts a shadow over his second Earth Day as president.

Timber industry representative Nick Smith said before the order was made public that loggers are worried it will add more bureaucracy to a forest management framework already unable to keep up with growing wildfires due to climate change.

That would undercut the Biden administration’s goal of doubling the amount of logging and controlled burns over the next decade to thin forests in the tinder-dry West, said Smith, a spokesman for the American Forest Resource Council, an Oregon-based industry group.

“The federal government has an urgent need to reduce massive greenhouse gas emissions from severe wildfires, which can only be accomplished by actively managing our unhealthy and overstocked federal forests,” he said.

But former U.S. Forest Service Deputy Chief Jim Furnish said wildfire risks and climate change would be better addressed by removing smaller trees that can fuel uncontrolled blazes, while leaving mature trees in place.

For many years the Forest Service allowed older trees that are worth more to be logged, to bring in money for removal of smaller trees, Furnish said. But that’s no longer necessary after Congress approved more than $5 billion to reduce wildfire risks in last year’s infrastructure bill, he said. The law includes money to hire 1,500 firefighters and ensure they earn at least $15 an hour.

Timber sales from federal forests nationwide more than doubled over the past 20 years, as Republicans and Democrats have pushed more aggressive thinning of stands to reduce small trees and vegetation that fuel wildfires.

Critics, including many forest scientists, say officials are allowing removal of too many older trees that can withstand fire.

A letter signed by 135 scientists called on Biden to protect mature and old-growth forests as a critical climate solution.

“Older forests provide the most above-ground carbon storage potential on Earth, with mature forests and larger trees driving most accumulation of forest carbon in the critical next few decades. Left vulnerable to logging, though, they cannot fulfill these vital functions,″ the scientists wrote Thursday. Former Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck and Norman Christensen, founding dean and professor emeritus at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment, were among those signing the letter.

Protecting mature forests also “would set an important, highly visible example for other major forest-holding nations to follow as they address climate change threats,″ the scientists wrote.

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Associated Press writer Matthew Brown in Billings, Montana, contributed to this story.