But in Ukraine, where Russia’s brutal attack continued, a senior adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told officials were “very disappointed” with the outcome of Wednesday’s series of summits between NATO and European Union leaders in Brussels that brought Biden to Europe.
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“We expected more courage. We expected some bold decisions,” Andriy Yermak, Zelensky’s chief of staff, told the Atlantic Council in Washington via live video on Friday.
US and Ukrainian officials believe the Russian operation has already, in some respects, already failed given strong Ukrainian resistance and heavy Russian casualties, and Russia signaled on Friday that its targets may be tightening. But Yermak’s comments served as a reminder that Ukraine remains undermanned, underarmed and faces more destruction every day. The Pentagon said Friday Russia had begun mobilizing military reinforcements with a view to possibly sending them to Ukraine.
By issuing a general statement on continued military support while rejecting Ukraine’s requests to send Soviet-era jet fighters, imposing a no-fly zone on Russian planes over Ukraine, and speeding up the flow of heavier aircraft Arms, Yermak said, NATO is “just trying to make sure it doesn’t provoke Russia into a military conflict” with the West, calling the alliance’s inaction “appeasement.”
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“We need very specific things. But we have to keep reminding you of that,” he said.
Yermak said Ukraine needs NATO to close and resupply “our skies” to the Russian Air Force “Real-time intelligence” and more anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons – some of which are now in short supply in the West. He also advocated more long-range artillery, rocket launchers and small arms.
“Without them,” said Yermak, “our war will not stand.”
Far from an expected rush to fully occupy a country with a far weaker military, Russia appeared to have lost at least partial control of the southern Ukrainian Black Sea city of Kherson, the first of a handful of mid-sized cities it has, according to defense officials on Friday has struggled to occupy it in the five weeks since the invasion began.
In other parts of the country, too, Ukrainian forces, supported by armed civilians, have pushed back Russian advances. The Pentagon said Friday that Ukraine had made “incremental” advances against Russia outside the northern city of Chernihiv and other offensives were underway in the western suburbs of the capital Kyiv. A senior US defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity under ground rules laid down by the Pentagon, said Russian troops, which have been stuck outside Kyiv for weeks, have begun building up defensive positions rather than prioritizing an advance.
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While Russia’s goal in the invasion initially appeared to be capturing Kiev, the Kremlin is now emphasizing its intention to control the Donbass region to the east, where Ukrainian troops have been battling two breakaway territories since 2014. Moscow has recognized the region as two separate “republics”.
“The combat potential of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has been significantly reduced, which allows our core efforts to be focused on achieving the main goal, liberation of Donbass,” Sergey Rudskoy, head of the Main Operations Directorate of the Russian General Staff, said in a speech on Friday.
Refocusing on the Donbass could be a face-saving measure as the Russians fail to achieve their larger goals of capturing Kiev and beheading the Ukrainian government. The Russians have made modest gains in the east, and their focus now may be on expanding Separatist-controlled territory and declaring victory. It could also be designed as a ploy to give besieged Russian troops a respite.
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It’s not clear if Russian troops are being withdrawn from elsewhere to reinforce the Donbass, the US defense official said, but there are indications they have changed the way they fight elsewhere.
“It seems that the Russians are not pursuing a ground offensive against Kyiv at the moment,” the official said. “They dig in. They are setting up defensive positions.”
Rudskoy also issued Russia’s first casualty assessment since early March, saying 1,351 service members died and 3,825 were injured. That’s what NATO estimated on Wednesday Between 7,000 and 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in four weeks of fighting in Ukraine, according to a senior alliance military official.
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The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity under NATO ground rules, said the estimate was based on several factors, including information from Ukrainian officials, which the Russian side has released, and open sources. For comparison, after invading Afghanistan in late 1979, Russia lost about 15,000 troops in a decade of war.
The latest Russian casualties, according to a Western official and a Ukrainian journalist, included Colonel Yuri Medvedev, commander of the 37th Motorized Rifle Brigade, who was attacked and injured by troops under his command after they suffered heavy casualties in the fighting outside Kyiv. The troops drove a tank into Medvedev and injured both their legs after their unit lost nearly half its men, according to a Facebook post by journalist Roman Tsymbaliuk.
Although Tsymbaliuk said the colonel was hospitalized, a senior Western official said he believed Medvedev was killed.
Russia’s bombing of Ukraine’s population centers and other targets continued, with the senior defense official reporting Moscow was flying 300 sorties a day over Ukraine — an increase over a week ago. On Friday, Ukraine’s air force also claimed Russian missiles hit a command center in Vinnytsia, west-central Ukraine, causing “significant” damage to some buildings.
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The southern port city of Mariupol remained under heavy Russian attack and cut off from food, water and humanitarian aid. Matilda Bogner, head of the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, said at a news conference on Friday that her agency had received “increasing information” and satellite images of mass graves in Mariupol.
An identified mass grave appears to contain about 200 bodies, she said, although it’s unclear how many of those who died were civilian casualties of the war.
Bogner said the UN human rights office has also documented 22 cases in which Ukrainian officials have disappeared or been forcibly detained in Russian-controlled areas, 13 of which have since been released. A number of journalists in the Russian-held areas of the south-east have disappeared or been killed.
In his speech on Friday, Yermak expressed his gratitude to the United States and other Western countries, as did Zelensky in the numerous video addresses he has made to Western lawmakers and other audiences. But like Zelenskyy, Yermak emphasized that Ukraine is the West’s front line against further Russian aggression, which NATO must stop for its own safety.
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Biden in Poland announced an additional $1 billion he previously announced to help the millions of Ukrainians who have fled violence to neighboring countries and beyond Millions displaced and suffering within the country. The United States has also committed to providing more than $2 billion in military equipment under Biden, including Stinger man-portable anti-aircraft missiles and Javelin anti-tank weapons.
When Russia’s offensive began in late February, the State Department appealed to countries to which it had sold these weapons in the past to share them that they could spare Ukraine. The United States, they promised, would quickly issue the necessary waivers to take them to another country and replenish their arsenals with weapons from their own stockpiles.
But as the need in Ukraine has grown, some of these weapons, especially Stingers, have become increasingly scarce. Production lines for the missiles, which first entered service in 1981, were shut down some time ago, and “we are evaluating options to more quickly replenish U.S. inventories and replenish depleted inventories from allies and partners,” the Defense Department spokeswoman said , Jessica R. Maxwell.
“It will take time to revitalize the industrial base … to allow production to resume,” Maxwell said in an email. Ways to speed up production, she said, included adding extra workers to the production line and developing alternatives for obsolete components.
Mike Nachshen, senior director of international communications for Raytheon Missiles and Defense, which manufactures Stingers, said they “recognize the urgent need to strengthen stockpiles” and are working with government and industry “to accelerate production schedules so we can add additional ones.” Units from can deliver this critical combat ability as soon as possible.”
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The government is considering invoking the Defense Production Act, which gives the executive branch emergency powers to control domestic industries and speed up production of certain critical goods. Both Biden and President Donald Trump invoked the law to combat the Covid 19 pandemic.
The US promise to back-supply US-made defense equipment sent by other nations to Ukraine is of particular relevance to countries along NATO’s eastern flank concerned with defending their own frontlines a possible confrontation with Russia.
In particular, Ukraine has asked for additions to the Russian-made S-300 air defense system, which is already in its arsenal, and whose missiles fly higher and farther than the short-range Stingers. Slovakia and Bulgaria – which, like Ukraine, are former Soviet-era members of the Warsaw Pact – own the system, as does Greece.
Bulgaria and Greece have refused. Slovakia has announced it will transfer the system as long as the aging S-300 is replaced immediately, an action that will require a variety of downstream changes to other capabilities once an alternative has been identified. During a visit to Slovakia last weekend, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said officials are working on it.
Radovan Javorcik, Slovakia’s ambassador to the United States, said in an email this week his government is in “close consultation” with allies, but “until a concrete replacement for the S-300 system is identified, the Slovakia will not be able to decide on a possible donation of the system.”
DeYoung and Horton reported from Washington. Miriam Berger in Jerusalem; Liz Sly in London; Mary Ilyushina in Riga, Latvia; and Dan Lamothe in Washington contributed to this report.