Austin condemns Kremlin ‘apologists’ in pledging support for Ukraine

KYIV, Ukraine — Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin 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,” Austin said in a speech capping a day of meetings in Ukraine with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy 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,” Austin added. “We refuse to offer excuses for Putin’s atrocities. And we refuse to pretend that appeasement will stop an invasion.”

Austin, making his third wartime visit to Ukraine, did not mention former President Donald Trump in his critique and has studiously sought to steer clear of partisan politics during his tenure as President Joe Biden’s top defense adviser. When asked if Austin included 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 Trump has been transparent about his hostility to Ukraine’s cause. He has delivered a series of speeches deriding Zelenskyy, 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, Austin did not hold back in an impassioned 30-minute speech.

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 in recent days, Austin, a retired four-star general, argued that the Kremlin has been the big loser in the 2 1/2-year-old conflict.

“Russia has paid a staggering price for Putin’s imperial war,” 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, U.S. and other Western analysts say.

The visit by Austin, who arrived by overnight train from Poland, came three days after Biden met with allied leaders in Germany to rally support for Ukraine, and with the fate of future U.S. 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 Zelenskyy, 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 Zelenskyy, 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.

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 Austin’s Ukrainian counterpart, Rustem Umerov, and Ukraine’s top military commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, the U.S. 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, 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 front-line areas are short of troops.

“They’re working hard to bring more people on board,” Austin told reporters traveling with him. “They’ve got to train those people. They have to regenerate combat power.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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