US believes Ukraine can beat Russia with ‘right equipment’

The United States believes Ukraine can win the war against Russia if it has the “right equipment”, Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin said Monday, as Moscow announced a ceasefire in the besieged city of Mariupol to evacuate civilians.

The landmark visit by Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Ukraine comes as the war entered its third month, with thousands killed and millions displaced by the fighting.

The bloody conflict has triggered an outburst of support from Western nations that has seen a deluge of weapons pour into Ukraine to help beat back the Russian attackers.

“The first step in winning is believing that you can win. And so they believe that we can win,” Austin told a group of journalists after he and Blinken met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“We believe that we can win, they can win if they have the right equipment, the right support.”

The meeting between the two sides lasted three hours and was “very productive and detailed”, according to a Pentagon spokesman, adding that Zelensky was also briefed on an upcoming security summit in Germany on Tuesday among Western allies.

Following the talks, Austin went on to say that the US hoped the Russian military would be exhausted in Ukraine, preventing it from launching further military operations in the future.

“We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in attacking Ukraine,” said Austin.

For months, Zelensky has been begging for heavy weapons — including artillery and fighter jets — from Western countries, vowing his forces could turn the tide of the war with more firepower.

The calls appear to be resonating, with a host of NATO countries pledging in recent days to provide a range of heavy weapons and equipment to Ukraine, despite protests from Moscow.

The US has been a leading donor of finance and weaponry to Ukraine and a key sponsor of sanctions targeting Russia, but had not yet sent any top officials to Kyiv, while several European leaders had travelled there to underscore their support.

“Many countries are going to come forward and provide additional munitions and howitzers. So we’re gonna push as hard as we can, as quickly as we can, to get them what they need,” Austin later said in reference to Tuesday’s summit in Germany.

Austin and Blinken also said US diplomats will begin a gradual return to Ukraine this week and announced $700 million (653 million euros) in additional military aid.

The highly sensitive trip by two of President Joe Biden’s top cabinet members came as fighting continued to rage across swathes of Ukraine, casting a long shadow over Easter celebrations in the largely Orthodox country.

Just hours after the talks in Kyiv, Russia’s defence ministry announced a ceasefire around the sprawling Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, following calls over the weekend to pause fighting to allow civilians to leave the area.

Russian troops “from 14:00 Moscow time (1100 GMT) on April 25, 2022, will unilaterally stop any hostilities, withdraw units to a safe distance and ensure the withdrawal of” civilians, the defence ministry said in a statement.

It said the civilians will be taken “in any direction they have chosen” and added that the Ukrainian side should show “readiness” to start the humanitarian evacuations “by raising white flags” at Azovstal.

The ceasefire comes a day after Kyiv said it had invited Moscow to hold talks near Azovstal, after an attempt to evacuate civilians over the weekend was thwarted by Russian forces, according to Ukrainian officials.

“We invited Russians to hold a special round of talks on the spot, right next to the walls of Azovstal,” the last Ukrainian stronghold in the strategic port, said Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych.