Ukraine Offensive Will Push Through Winter, U.S. Defense Chief Says
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The “deliberate cruelty” of Russia’s latest bombardment has made the West more determined to help Ukraine, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said.
By Catrin Einhorn
Oct. 12, 2022
Updated 8:14 p.m. ET
By John Ismay
Oct. 12, 2022, 7:01 p.m. ET
BRUSSELS — Ukraine will remain on the offensive through the winter, retaking more ground lost to the Russian invasion, the U.S. secretary of defense predicted on Wednesday, adding that the United States and its allies would supply Ukraine with whatever weapons and supplies it needed for “the difficult weeks, months and years ahead.”
“I expect that Ukraine will continue to do everything it can throughout the winter to regain its territory and to be effective on the battlefield, and we’re going to do everything we can to make sure that they have what’s required to be effective,” Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said after a meeting in Brussels of top military officials from some 50 countries aiding Ukraine.
“Most recently, we’ve seen them be very effective both in the east and down in the south as they’ve taken back quite a bit of territory from the Russians, so we can expect that that type of activity will continue on through the winter,” he said.
Comments before and after the meeting signaled a hardening of international determination to back Kyiv in the face of Russia’s recent missile and drone attacks on civilian targets across Ukraine; talk of nudging both sides toward a negotiated settlement, common among some U.S. allies early in the war, has all but evaporated.
“That resolve has only been heightened by the deliberate cruelty of Russia’s new barrage against Ukraine’s cities,” Mr. Austin said at a news conference in Brussels. “Those assaults on targets with no military purpose again reveal the malice of Putin’s war of choice.”
Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was with the secretary, described such attacks as “a war crime in the international rules of war.”
The meeting of the U.S.-led Ukraine Defense Contact Group focused on Ukraine’s need for additional robust air-defense systems, more artillery and munitions for both, and produced new commitments from some of the dozens of nations involved.
Ukraine said Germany had delivered an air-defense missile system so new that it had never been used in battle and even Germany’s military, itself, had not fielded it yet. The United States said it was expediting delivery of another system, and France and the Netherlands said they would supply still others.
Despite the stepped-up Russian strikes, Ukrainian forces remain on the offensive against the Kremlin’s beleaguered troops in south and east Ukraine, retaking territory that had been seized by Russia; on Wednesday, the government said it had recaptured five villages in southern Kherson Province.
Military analysts have speculated that harsh winter weather could tamp down the fighting and that Ukraine was racing to seize as much terrain as it could before that happened. But Mr. Austin, a former four-star Army general, gave the clearest signal yet that he thought Ukraine would press its advantage while Russian troops were demoralized and in retreat.
U.S. officials suggested that Ukrainian forces, with ample backing, could be better supplied for winter combat than Russia, which has little international support. Mr. Austin said that while some nations were not in a position to provide Ukraine with weapons, “we urge them to provide vital nonlethal aid such as medical supplies and cold-weather gear that the Ukrainians need to fight in the winter.”
Last month, as Russian troops fled from some regions in disarray, Ukraine retook thousands of square miles it had lost shortly after the Feb. 24 invasion. But now, the Russians are digging in and are being reinforced by former prison inmates and fresh conscripts, said Serhiy Haidai, the Ukrainian chief of the Luhansk region.
Mr. Haidai's claim, which could not be independently verified, is one of the first indications that President Vladimir V. Putin’s desperate efforts to bolster Russian forces are having an effect on the battlefield. Mr. Putin ordered a military draft just three weeks ago — though officials said the new conscripts would not be sent to the front — and the Wagner Group, a mercenary force led by a close ally of Mr. Putin’s, has been recruiting inmates to serve as frontline soldiers, offering the promise of freedom if they survive.
On Saturday, an explosion badly damaged the Kerch Strait Bridge linking Russia to Crimea, a symbol of Mr. Putin’s seizure of that peninsula in 2014 and a major supply route for his forces in southern Ukraine. Speaking on the condition of anonymity because the government is not publicly addressing the matter, a senior Ukrainian official confirmed that, as the Kremlin had charged, Ukrainian intelligence was responsible.
Russia’s domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Security Service, known by its Russian acronym F.S.B., said on Wednesday that it had arrested eight people, including five Russians, in connection with the explosion, which it said had resulted from a truck bomb.
In apparent retaliation for the bridge explosion, Russia stepped up attacks on cities in Ukraine to the highest level since early in the war, striking infrastructure like water and power systems, as well as homes. Ukraine says it shot down many of the cruise missiles and drones launched by Russian forces, but others got through, with deadly results.
When the war began, many military analysts thought that Russian air power would wipe out Ukraine’s air defenses in a matter of days or weeks, giving Moscow unchallenged control of the skies. That has not happened, and as a result, Russian warplanes rarely venture deep into Ukraine, where they risk being shot down.
General Milley and Mr. Austin acknowledged Ukraine’s need for still more air defenses, but did not say whether the United States had committed to sending specific systems that were not previously announced.
White House officials said on Tuesday that the Biden administration was working to deliver to Ukraine, as quickly as possible, two air-defense systems known as NASAMs, with a range of up to 30 miles. Such weapons are used to defend the White House and other sites in Washington from an aerial attack.
Ukraine’s government said on Wednesday that it had received from Germany the first of four newly developed IRIS-T air-defense systems, with a somewhat shorter range, which even Germany does not have yet. The first example had been promised to Egypt, with Ukraine scheduled to receive one next month, but the government in Cairo agreed to trade its place in line with Kyiv, the German government said.
“All the reports point to it being an effective system,” said Thomas Wiegold, a journalist who specializes in German military matters, “but it has never been tested under actual enemy fire.”
In his nightly address, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said, “The more audacious and cruel Russian terror becomes, the more obvious it is to the world that helping Ukraine to protect the sky is one of the most important humanitarian tasks for Europe of our time.”
General Milley said, “What Ukraine is asking for, and what we think can be provided, is an integrated air missile defense system” consisting of different weapons for short, medium and long range.
But the result will be a hodgepodge of Western-supplied systems and the Soviet- and Russian-made batteries Ukraine already has, and it will be some time before they can become a functioning whole, General Milley said.
“The task will be to bring those together, get them deployed, get them trained because each of these systems is different, make sure they can link together with the command and control and communication systems, and make sure they have radars that can talk to each other so that they can acquire targets on the inbound flights,” he said. “So it’s quite complicated from a technical standpoint.”
Richard Pérez-Peña contributed reporting from New York, Christopher F. Schuetze from Berlin and Matthew Mpoke Bigg from London.
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