The trip by the U.S. defense secretary comes as Russian forces steadily gain territory in eastern Ukraine.
By Eric Schmitt
October 21, 2024
The New York Times
Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III on Monday offered full-throated support for Ukraine’s fight against Russia and delivered biting criticism of naysayers who might seek to end the conflict on Moscow’s terms. “We fully understand the moral chasm between aggressor and defender,” Mr. Austin said in a speech capping a day of meetings in Ukraine with President Volodymyr Zelensky and his top military leaders to hash out war strategy. “We will not be gulled by the frauds and the falsehoods of the Kremlin’s apologists.” “We refuse to blame Ukraine for the Kremlin’s aggression,” Mr. Austin added. “We refuse to offer excuses for Putin’s atrocities. And we refuse to pretend that appeasement will stop an invasion.”
Mr. Austin, making his third wartime visit to Ukraine, did not mention former President Donald J. Trump in his critique and has studiously sought to steer clear of partisan politics during his tenure as President Biden’s top defense adviser. When asked if Mr. Austin included Mr. Trump in his critique, a Pentagon official said: “The secretary was referring broadly to those who push misinformation about Ukraine and broadly are all over the world.”
But Mr. Trump has been transparent about his hostility to Ukraine’s cause. He has delivered a series of speeches deriding Mr. Zelensky, including blaming the Ukrainian president for Russia’s invasion of his country. He has misstated facts about the war, echoed Kremlin talking points and said Ukraine was already basically lost. With possibly only three months left in a job that has been largely defined by his role in supporting Ukraine, Mr. Austin did not hold back in an impassioned 30-minute speech.
Mr. Austin said the war’s outcome affected not only Ukraine’s future, but also the long-term security interests of the United States and its allies in Europe. And while Ukrainian forces have steadily lost ground to Russian troops days in recent days, Mr. Austin, a retired four-star general, argued that the Kremlin has been the big loser in the two-and-a-half year old conflict. “Russia has paid a staggering price for Putin’s imperial war,” Mr. Austin said to an audience of Ukrainian diplomats and military officials in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, noting that Russia has failed to achieve a single one of its strategic goals after it launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Indeed, September was the bloodiest month of the war for Russian forces in Ukraine, U.S. officials have said. And according to U.S. assessments, Russian casualties in the war so far number as many as 615,000: 115,000 Russians killed and 500,000 wounded.
U.S. and British military analysts put Russian casualties in September at an average of more than 1,200 a day, slightly surpassing the previous highest daily rate of the war that was set in May. U.S. officials attribute the high number of Russian casualties to what they describe as a grinding war of attrition, with each side trying to exhaust the other by inflicting maximum losses, hoping to break the enemy’s capacity and will to continue. And yet, Moscow seems undeterred by its astounding troop losses to achieve marginal gains, American and other Western analysts say. The visit by Mr. Austin, who arrived by overnight train from Poland, came three days after Mr. Biden met with allied leaders in Germany to rally support for Ukraine, and with the fate of future American military aid to the country hanging in the balance of the U.S. presidential election in two weeks.
Much of the secretary’s day in Kyiv was filled with meetings to discuss battlefield updates and strategy for the coming months, including Ukraine’s desperate need for more air defenses to ward off Russian missile and glide-bomb attacks aimed at destroying the country’s electrical grid as winter approaches.
In his meeting with Mr. Zelensky, Mr. Austin announced that the Pentagon would send Ukraine a new $400 million shipment of arms, including ammunition for HIMARS rocket systems, additional munitions, armored vehicles and anti-tank weapons. The United States has provided Ukraine more than $61 billion in security aid since the start of the war. In recent days, Russian troops have clawed back much of the territory Ukraine seized in Russia’s western Kursk region. In his meeting with Mr. Zelensky, Mr. Austin stressed the importance of defending Kursk and blunting the Russians’ slow, grinding progress in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, a Pentagon official said.
In addition, Russia has significantly increased drone strikes against Ukrainian targets across the country. Attacks have increased from 350 strikes in July, to 750 in August and 1,500 in September, according to two Western officials.
Ukraine’s offensive into Kursk in August caught American officials — as well as Russian commanders — by surprise. Besides bolstering troop and public morale, the incursion had two primary objectives: to force the Kremlin to divert soldiers from other parts of the front to respond to the attack, thereby easing pressure on Ukrainian forces; and to capture territory that Moscow will seek to reclaim, potentially forcing it to come to the negotiating table. While the first goal appears to have failed so far, officials in Kyiv have clung to the second goal as part of their plan to push Russia into peace negotiations. So far, that has not worked, either.
Ukraine still holds roughly 300 square miles of territory in Kursk — down from a peak of about 400 square miles — but Russian forces, after a slow and disjointed start, are intensifying air and ground attacks. The offensive has also stretched Ukraine’s human and matériel resources, which are sorely needed elsewhere on the eastern and southern fronts to fend off Russian attacks that continue unabated.
Mr. Austin said in his speech that there was “no silver bullet” to turn the tide of the war in Ukraine’s favor. “What matters is the way that Ukraine fights back,” he said. “What matters is the combined effects of your military capabilities. And what matters is staying focused on what
works.” In a separate meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart, Rustem Umerov, and Ukraine’s top military commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, the American officials discussed military planning for the upcoming winter, and what kind of additional arms and munitions that the U.S. may send in the next five months, the Pentagon official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential discussions.
Speaking to reporters traveling with him, Mr. Austin also said that U.S. officials would help Ukraine train and equip new units it is forming. Reports have surfaced that many Ukrainian units fighting in southern Donetsk and other frontline areas are short of troops. “They’re working hard to bring more people on board,” Mr. Austin told reporters traveling with him. “They’ve got to train those people. They have to regenerate combat power.” Away from the battlefield, Ukraine is also facing headwinds.
Mr. Zelensky told European Union leaders last week in Brussels that his country desperately needed their support for his plan to end the war, which he maintained could happen no later than next year. A major point in Mr. Zelensky’s so-called victory plan is for Ukraine’s accession into the NATO military alliance, a proposal that American officials have balked at, fearing it could drag the United States directly into the war.
Mr. Zelensky’s strategy also calls for the West to lift restrictions on Kyiv’s use of missiles provided by the West to strike ammunition depots and other military facilities deep inside Russia, and to share more satellite data that Ukraine can use to identify and strike Russian targets. The Biden administration has repeatedly rejected such moves, wary about provoking retaliation against U.S. interests.
Eric Schmitt is a national security correspondent for The Times, focusing on U.S. military affairs and counterterrorism issues overseas, topics he has reported on for more than three decades.