US won’t let Kyiv fail, says Pentagon chief – DW – 03/19/2024

Russia’s Defense Ministry says its forces have captured the village of Orlivka in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk.

It lies 9.5 kilometers (5.9 miles) northwest of Avdiivka. Ukrainian forces withdrew from the city last month.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Ukrainian General Staff said that Kyiv’s forces had repelled nine Russian attacks around Orlivka.

Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi says that the development of drones is key to giving Kyiv an advantage over Russian forces, which outnumber Ukrainian troops.

“The development of the use of unmanned systems is my priority,” Syrskyi said in a post on Telegram. “We are looking for asymmetric solutions to gain a qualitative advantage over a numerically superior opponent.”

Both Ukrainian and Russian forces have increasingly employed drones to strike infrastructure in recent months. Moscow has been making gradual gains along the frontline.

In February, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ordered the creation of a separate branch of the Ukrainian military tasked with developing and managing drones.

Russia has replaced the head of its navy, according to state media.

The former commander of Russia’s Northern Fleet, Alexander Moiseyeve, has been appointed acting commander-in-chief of the navy.

He replaces Nikolai Yevmenov, who had held the position since May 2019.

Ukrainian forces say they have destroyed more than two dozen Russian ships since the conflict began in February 2022.

Russia has been forced to move boats from its historic naval base in the port of Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula to Novorossiysk in the Krasnodar region of the northern Caucasus.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin says that Washington will continue helping Ukraine fight off Russia’s invasion.

The “United States will not let Ukraine fail,” Austin said at the opening of a meeting of Kyiv’s allies at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany’s southwestern state of Rhineland-Palatinate.

“We remain determined to provide Ukraine with the resources that it needs to resist the Kremlin’s aggression.”

A bill that would provide $60 billion (€55.3 billion) in aid for Ukraine is stalling in US Congress over Republican opposition.

Austin said that the US was only able to muster a $300 million stopgap package of assistance for Kyiv by saving on recent purchases by the Pentagon.

“We were only able to support this much-needed package by identifying some unanticipated contract savings,” Austin said.

Top US military officer Charles Brown told journalists that Ukrainian forces are “having to pay attention to their supply rates, and how they execute.”

Brown said that there is an “incremental kind of back and forth between Ukraine and Russia” with “incremental gains on both sides.”

sdi/fb (AFP, Reuters)