Ukraine meets with US about defense needs amid national security leak fallout
Mike Brest
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Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal met with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at the Pentagon on Wednesday.
The Ukrainian prime minister called it an “important meeting,” and said the two discussed Kyiv’s “urgent needs in liberating [Ukrainian] territories and joint efforts to strengthen our capabilities for the future.”
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Shmyhal thanked the Biden administration for its continued support for Ukraine, though he asked for “intensive military support” and urged it to “reconsider” providing Ukraine with longer-range missiles and fighter aircraft, while Austin noted that the roughly $30 billion in military aid has “made a clear and direct difference on the battlefield.”
“We will win this war,” he added. “But to achieve it faster and with fewer casualties, Ukraine still needs intensive military support — more air defense systems that minimize the impact of Russian airstrikes, more heavy artillery, mortars, and ammunition for them. We also ask you for reconsider the possibility of providing Ukraine with longer-range missiles.”
“In modern warfare, air superiority is crucial,” Shmyhal explained. “That is why Ukraine is initiating the building of a new, so-called fighter jet coalition. And we are inviting the United States to become its most important participant. America can once again demonstrate its leadership by providing Ukraine with F-15 or F-16 aircraft.”
Their meeting came amid a Department of Defense scandal in which roughly 100 classified documents, some of which were about the war in Ukraine, were leaked on social media platforms. The Pentagon is investigating the leak, as is the Department of Justice, which has opened up a criminal investigation.
U.S. authorities still do not know who is responsible for the leak or whether the individual is in possession of additional classified information. Some of the documents that have been leaked appear to have been manipulated or altered. Since the leak became known, U.S. officials have sought to reassure allies, Ukraine included.
One document, labeled “top secret,” provided a bleak assessment of Ukraine’s highly anticipated spring offensive. This document, which was from early February, warned that large “force generation and sustainment shortfalls” make it more likely that its offensive will result in only “modest territorial gains,” according to the Washington Post.
The assessment falls in line with comments from Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley, who said earlier this month that he believed it’d be very difficult for the Ukrainians to push Russian forces out of all Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, by the end of the year.
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There’s also a document dated Feb. 23 that provided an insight into the fighting in Ukraine’s Donbas region that predicted a “grinding campaign of attrition” by Russia that “is likely heading toward a stalemate, thwarting Moscow’s goal to capture the entire region in 2023,” while another indicated Ukraine has had alarmingly low levels of Western-supplied weaponry, specifically air defense and ammunition.
Austin, addressing the leak for the first time publicly, told reporters on Tuesday, “We will continue to investigate and turn over every rock until we find the source of this and the extent of it.”