"A couple of decades might be enough to integrate Russia’s neighbors into the Western world and build stronger defenses against further imperialist resurgence." | US sending $1 billion more military aid to outgunned Ukraine
"A couple of decades might be enough to integrate Russia’s neighbors into the Western world and build stronger defenses against further imperialist resurgence."
Is Breaking Up Russia the Only Way to End Its Imperialism? - The Washington Post washingtonpost.com/business/energ…
The Brookyn Times: US sending $1 billion more military aid to outgunned Ukraine
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. announced it will send an additional $1 billion in military aid to Ukraine, as America and its allies provide longer-range weapons they say can make a difference in a fight where Ukrainian forces are outnumbered and outgunned by their Russian invaders.
President Joe Biden and his top national security leaders said Wednesday the U.S. is moving as fast as possible to get critical weapons to the fight, even as Ukrainian officials protest that they need more, faster, in order to survive.
The latest package, the U.S. said, includes anti-ship missile launchers, howitzers and more rounds for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) that U.S. forces are training Ukrainian troops on now. All are key weapons systems that Ukrainian leaders have urgently requested as they battle to stall Russia’s slow but steady march to conquer the eastern Donbas region.
“Gen. Milley and I have been in a number of fights. And when you’re in a fight, you can never get enough,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said at a press conference in Brussels, referring to Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“I certainly understand where the Ukrainians are coming from, and we’re gonna fight hard to give them everything they need.”
The HIMARS and anti-ship systems are the kinds of longer range capabilities that over time can make a difference in the fight, Milley said. He said Ukraine will have trained HIMARS crews in the fight in a few weeks.
“If they use the weapon properly and it’s employed properly, they ought to be able to take out a significant amount of targets and that will make a difference,” he said. But he also noted that the numbers clearly favor the Russians.
“In terms of artillery, they do outnumber, they out-gun and out-range” the Ukrainian forces.
The aid is the largest single tranche of weapons and equipment since the war began. Biden, who spoke by phone with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for about 40 minutes Wednesday, also said the U.S. will send $225 million more in humanitarian assistance to provide safe drinking water, medical supplies, food, health care, shelter and money for families to buy essential items.
The U.S. remains committed, Biden said in a statement, “to supporting the Ukrainian people whose lives have been ripped apart by this war.”
The aid comes as Austin convened a meeting in Brussels of more than 45 nations to discuss support for Ukraine. At the start of the meeting, he warned that the West must step up weapons deliveries to Ukraine and prove its commitment to helping the country’s military fight along a 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line in a grinding war of attrition with Russia.
He told the participating nations, “We can’t afford to let up and we can’t lose steam. The stakes are too high.”
Overall, since the war began in late February, the U.S. has committed about $5.6 billion in security assistance to Ukraine, including this latest package. Officials said that about one-third of the latest $1 billion will be from presidential drawdown authority, which means the Pentagon will take weapons and equipment from it’s own stock and ship them to Ukraine. The remaining two-thirds would be equipment and weapons purchased from industry by the U.S. and then transferred to Ukraine.
Austin’s meeting, also attended by Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, came on the opening day of a two-day gathering of NATO defense ministers at the alliance headquarters.
Increased arms supplies can’t come too soon for the Ukrainian forces battling to keep Russia from taking control of their country’s industrial east after more than 3½ months of war. In his nightly address to the nation, President Zelenskyy pleaded Tuesday for more and faster deliveries of Western arms, specifically asking for anti-missile defense systems.
“Allies are committed to continue providing the military equipment that Ukraine needs to prevail, including heavy weapons and long-range systems,” said Jens Stoltenberg, NATO secretary-general.
Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar said Tuesday that without help from the West, “we will not be able to win this war.” She said Ukraine uses 5,000 to 6,000 artillery rounds a day, while Russia uses 10 times that many.
The defense ministers also planned to discuss moves to beef up forces along NATO’s own eastern flank and elsewhere, which have gathered strength since Russia invaded Ukraine.
“This will mean more presence, more capabilities and higher readiness, with more NATO forward deployed combat formations to strengthen our battlegroups in the East, more air, sea and cyber defenses, pre-positioned equipment and weapon stockpiles,” Stoltenberg said.
On a separate but related subject, he wouldn’t commit to a timeframe for Sweden and Finland joining NATO. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is blocking the membership bids, accusing the Nordic nations of supporting Kurdish militants deemed by Turkey to be terrorists.
“My aim is to solve this issue as soon as possible, but since we are several nations involved in this process, there is no way to tell you exactly when we will solve it,” Stoltenberg said.
Because of Turkey’s concerns, “this will take some more time than we originally expected,” he said.
Erdogan signaled Wednesday he won’t back down.
“We will most definitely not change our stance until Sweden and Finland take clear, concrete and determined steps in the fight against terrorism,” Erdogan said in an address to his ruling party’s legislators.
All 30 NATO members must agree to admit new members.
___
Corder reported from The Hague, Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, and Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, contributed.
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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
The post US sending $1 billion more military aid to outgunned Ukraine first appeared on The Brookyn Times.
image/jpeg 630_360_1655303741-144.jpg image/jpeg 630_360_1646928455-901.jpegAP
- Children born in Ukraine's occupied Zaporizhzhia will be made Russian citizens, authorities said.
- The move is part of a longer drive to reshape occupied Ukraine to wipe its Ukrainian identity.
- Russia also forced people to use Russian currency and switched the TV signals to Russian ones.
Children born in an occupied part of Ukraine will no longer be considered Ukrainians at birth, authorities there said.
Instead, they will be given Russian citizenship and considered part of the Russian population.
The step is one of a series of measures in place through occupied Ukraine which are removing its national character and treating it instead as part of Russia.
The announcement about citizenship came from officials speaking to Russian state-run news outlet Ria Novosti.
Vladimir Rogov, a member of the Russian-installed administration in Zaporizhzhia, told Ria that the citizenship changed would be retroactive, affecting any babies born since the invasion began on February 24.
Rogov alleged that the move was made because Ukrainian authorities stopped issuing the documents and locals asked Russia to step in. He did not provide evidence for this claim, and it was not possible to verify it.
Ukraine condemned the move to hand out passports as a "flagrant violation," according to the BBC.
The policy for newborns comes alongside efforts to grant Russian citizenship to adults in occupied areas. Passports have been distributed in the occupied cities Kherson and Melitopol
That continued a years-long policy of giving Russian citizenship to Ukrainians in the areas of the Donbas region that have been controlled by pro-Russian separatists since 2014.
Wider efforts to impose a Russian rather than Ukrainian identity on occupied areas have included imposing the Russian ruble as the currency instead of Ukraine's hryvnia, limiting access to Ukrainian websites, and replacing TV broadcasts from Ukrainian channels to Russian ones.
Teachers have been brought in from Russia to teach the Russian curriculum in schools in Kherson, according to the UK government, and children have been prohibited from speaking Ukrainian in schools in Mariupol, according to the advisor to the city's mayor before Russia took over.
Rogov told Russia's TASS news agency that a referendum would soon be held in Zaporizhzhia to decide whether the region should formally become part of Russia.
A similar referendum was held in Crimea after Russia annexed it in 2014. Its result — 97% in favor of joining Russia — was rejected by Ukraine, its allies, and the United Nations General Assembly as illegitimate.
The Atlantic Council — a think tank — said earlier this year that turning Ukrainians into Russian citizens was a deliberate strategy by Russia to give itself a rationale for occupation: the need to defend its new citizens.
Is Breaking Up Russia the Only Way to End Its Imperialism? - The Washington Post washingtonpost.com/business/energ…
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Tens of thousands of civilians are now largely stranded in the middle of one of the war’s deadliest battles.
Lysychansk and Sievierodonetsk have seen sustained fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces for weeks.Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
LYSYCHANSK, Ukraine — All of the bridges connecting the twin Ukrainian cities of Lysychansk and Sievierodonetsk are destroyed and street-by-street fighting is raging, leaving thousands of civilians largely trapped inside one of the deadliest battles of the war so far.
Russia has targeted the area since its full-scale invasion began in February, but as it has narrowed its offensive to the resource-rich eastern Donbas region, Russian commanders have steadily redirected more forces to the small pocket of land in and around Sievierodonetsk.
There are an estimated 10,000 people still in the city of Sievierodonetsk, with several hundred believed to be holed up in bunkers beneath a chemical plant that is under near constant bombardment. The Ukrainian government said this week that any large-scale evacuation of the city is now impossible. Russia has promised to create a humanitarian corridor, but previous claims have failed to materialize and Russian forces have directed their fire in locations where civilians were gathering to flee.
Fierce fighting continued on Thursday in Lysychansk and Sievierodonetsk. A Russian airstrike struck the center of Lysychansk on Thursday morning, killing at least one person, local authorities said.
Throughout most of the day, Russian and Ukrainian artillery fired from opposing banks of the Siversky Donets River, which divides the two towns. A group of Ukrainian soldiers, taking a breather from the fighting in the basement in a Soviet-style apartment, asked reporters from The New York Times when Western rocket artillery systems would arrive, and said they needed many of them.
On the front line as Russian artillery pounds the city of Lysychansk, “one hour feels like an entire day,” one soldier said.
In Sievierodonetsk, the people in the ruined city are now largely on their own. Those who have made it out recently describe harrowing scenes.
Smoke rising from Sievierodonetsk on Sunday.Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesSerhiy Haidai, the head of the Luhansk military administration, said that the shelling was now so intense that “people can no longer stand it in the shelters — their psychological state is on the edge.”
Russia does not control the city, he said, and pitched battles are being fought from house to house. At the same time, Russian forces continue to lay waste to the villages around the city, Mr. Haidai said.
“The destruction of the residential sector is catastrophic,” he said. People in the city have reported running out of food and clean water — describing scenes similar to those that played out in Mariupol and many other towns and cities along the eastern front over the past four months.
Another 60,000 civilians are still believed to be living in Ukrainian-controlled Lysychansk. But the constant Russian bombardment of the area as Russia tries to encircle Ukrainian forces there has made any large-scale evacuation an exceedingly tough proposition.
Much of the estimated 50,000 to 60,000 rounds of artillery Russia is unleashing every day is concentrated in this last sliver of Luhansk Province under Ukrainian control.
The kind of convoy needed for a large-scale evacuation would most likely require coordination between Russia and Ukraine overseen by international mediators. There has been no public suggestion that such a plan is being discussed. In Lysychansk, volunteers, in a medley of vehicles, are evacuating dozens of civilians each day.
Ukraine’s top military commander, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, said in a statement that Russia had focused its efforts on this battle. In addition to nonstop artillery barrages, he said, Moscow is directing airstrikes and using multiple rocket launch systems to obliterate everything in its path. Russian forces are trying to advance along nine separate fronts from the north, east and south.
Despite Russia’s superior arsenal, the Ukrainians have been able to keep Moscow’s forces from completing the encirclement of the area. General Zaluzhnyi said they would continue to fight.
Sievierodonetsk, he said, is a key point in the defensive system of the Luhansk region. “The city can be seen as nothing less than that,” he said.
— Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Marc Santora and Natalia Yermak
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