“The first thing to win is to believe that you can win. And the Ukrainians are convinced that they can win,” said the defense secretary after meeting, along with Blinken, with the Ukrainian president, Volodímir Zelensky.
“They can win if they have good equipment and the right support,” he stressed.
The meeting lasted three hours and was “very productive and detailed,” according to a Pentagon spokesman, adding that Zelensky had been briefed on a security meeting of Western allies taking place in Germany on Tuesday.
Following the discussions, Lloyd Austin said the United States expects Russia’s military capabilities to be weakened: “We want to see Russia weakened to the point where it can’t do the kinds of things it has done by invading Ukraine.”
For months, Zelensky has asked Western countries for heavy weapons — including artillery and fighter jets — claiming that Ukrainian forces could turn the tide of the war with more firepower.
to the aid
The appeals now seem to have an echo. Several NATO countries have pledged in recent days to provide Ukraine with heavy weapons and equipment, despite protests from Moscow. And the United States has just given a strong signal in this regard.
Meanwhile, countries of the Atlantic Alliance in Eastern Europe have already transferred Russian-made fighter planes and tanks, material that the Ukrainian military knows how to operate. Governments like those of the United Kingdom promised these suppliers to replace what was sent with new material, in a kind of permanent triangulation.
Austin and Blinken, who returned to Polish territory yesterday morning, announced they were sending an additional $700 million in additional military aid, bringing the aid to over $5 billion.
Meanwhile, British Defense Minister Ben Wallace announced that the UK will deliver “a small quantity” of Stormer anti-aircraft armored rocket launchers.
The official estimated, for his part, that Moscow had so far lost “approximately 15,000 men” in Ukraine, a figure that could not be independently verified. In addition, since Moscow claimed to have lost 1,351 soldiers on March 25, the Kremlin did not give more balances of deaths.
Embassy
Blinken said that Biden plans to appoint the current ambassador to Slovakia, Bridget Brink, in the coming days as the new US chief diplomat in kyiv, a position that has been vacant since 2019.
The return of US diplomats will be gradual, according to a State Department official.
The visit by the two top US officials came as fighting continued to rage in Ukraine, casting a shadow over Easter celebrations in the largely Orthodox country.
At least five people died and 18 were injured by Russian bombardments against railway facilities in the towns of Jmerynka and Koziatyn (Vinnytsia region, center-west), the local Prosecutor’s Office announced yesterday.
In total, five train stations were shot at, according to the authorities, which is explained by the Russian interest in cutting off the supply routes for Western weapons.
Vinnytsia is an important railway junction both within Ukraine and for connections with the outside. Most of the international trains that cross the country pass through this region.
With thousands of people in increasingly precarious conditions, kyiv invited Moscow to talk near the Azovstal steel plant, where Ukrainian soldiers and civilians are taking refuge in the port city of Mariupol (southeast).
Russian President Vladimir Putin said he ordered his forces not to attack the industrial complex, but the Ukrainians say hostilities continued unabated.
Mariupol, which the Kremlin claims to have “liberated,” is key to Russian plans to open a land bridge to Russian-occupied Crimea.
This week, a senior Russian military official said Moscow’s goal is to take full control of the eastern Donbas region and southern Ukraine.
Source: Ambito
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