Lloyd Austin, head of the Pentagon, said Ukraine can win the war against Russia if “it has the right equipment and sufficient support”.
Ukraine can win the war against Russia if it has the right equipment and sufficient support, Pentagon Chief Lloyd Austin said Monday after returning from a trip to kyiv with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “The first thing to win is to believe that you can win. And they are convinced that they can win,” Lloyd Austin told some reporters about the Ukrainians. “They can win if they have the right equipment, the right support,” he added after the visit during which the two ministers met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The two ministers were the first US leaders to visit Ukraine since the Russian invasion began on February 24. They announced the very gradual return of an American diplomatic presence in Ukraine and new military aid, direct and indirect, of 700 million dollars in favor of kyiv. The United States has just given a boost to deliveries of military equipment to Ukraine. They are now supplying it with heavy weapons in order to resist the Russian offensive in the eastern part of the country.
“We want to see Russia weakened to such a degree that it cannot do the same kinds of things as the invasion of Ukraine,” the Pentagon chief said. “She’s already lost a lot of military capabilities, and a lot of troops to be frank, and we wouldn’t want her to be able to quickly replenish those capabilities,” he added.