(Kyiv) The return of American military aid to Ukraine will allow its army to regain the initiative against Russia, but the preparation of a counter-offensive will take much longer, a military official said on Thursday American.
Posted at 7:42 a.m.
Updated at 12:51 p.m.
On Wednesday, Joe Biden promulgated the new $61 billion aid plan and announced the delivery, “in the coming hours”, of a first tranche of military equipment and munitions of all kinds, for $1 billion .
But the aid comes after months of lean conditions from Washington due to internal political divisions – a drying up of aid that has benefited Russia on the battlefield.
“The Ukrainians have been rationing their ammunition for a while […]so the Russians have, in short, regained the initiative,” an American military official told the press on condition of anonymity.
Military aid from the allies “will allow the Ukrainians to begin to regain the initiative”, but “it will not be a rapid process”, she added.
The reception and operational implementation of new deliveries will take time, just “to defend their positions. So I would not foresee any large-scale offensive at first,” she added.
The United States is Kyiv’s main military backer, but Congress had not passed a large package for its ally in nearly a year and a half – mainly due to partisan squabbling.
“It is not too late for Ukraine to win” in the war against Russia, provided that the West keeps their promises to provide it with more weapons, the NATO chief said on Thursday .
“In recent months, NATO allies have not provided the support” they had promised, regretted Jens Stoltenberg, in a speech given at an awards ceremony in Berlin on transatlantic ties.
Ten dead in Russian and Ukrainian attacks
Ten people were killed and more than twenty injured Thursday in Ukraine, Russia and the territories it occupies, during strikes, notably using drones, carried out by the two camps, their respective authorities announced.
In the territories occupied by Russia, two people died in a Ukrainian drone attack in the Zaporizhia region and two others in Ukrainian artillery fire in the Kherson region, both in southern Ukraine, according to the Russian occupation authorities.
“Enemy drones attacked the village of Novokarlivka,” Yevgeny Balitsky, head of the Russian-occupied part of the Zaporizhia region, said on Telegram.
“A civilian car was hit, a man and a woman died,” he added, specifying that the couple leaves “four children […] orphans.”
In the same region, another Ukrainian strike damaged an apartment building and injured three people in Tokmak, an important logistics hub for the Russian army, Mr. Balitski said in another message.
In the neighboring Kherson region, two people lost their lives in shelling by the Ukrainian army and a gas pipeline there was “damaged”, the head of the local occupation administration, Vladimir Saldo, said on Telegram.
In Russia itself, a Ukrainian drone injured four civilians traveling aboard a bus, including a 14-year-old teenager, in the village of Kurkovichi, in the Bryansk region, according to its governor Alexandre Bogomaz.
On the Ukrainian side, three people were killed and four injured in a Russian missile strike on the village of Udatchné and three others killed in those of Kurakhivka, Novooleksandrivka and Otcheretino, according to the regional prosecutor’s office and Governor Vadim Filachkine.
All these localities are located in the Donetsk region, where most of the fighting is concentrated.
A Russian attack on a train station in the Kharkiv region, in northeastern Ukraine, also left ten people injured, according to Governor Oleg Synegoubov.
