U.S. rocket systems head to Ukraine

German air defense tech also sent as Russia gains

Russian forces launch multiple Uragan rockets at Ukrainian troops at an undisclosed location in this photo released Wednesday. The United States is sending Ukraine four medium-range precision-guided multiple-launch rocket systems that would be able to strike Russian troops from beyond the range of their artillery.
(AP/Russian Defense Ministry Press Service)
Russian forces launch multiple Uragan rockets at Ukrainian troops at an undisclosed location in this photo released Wednesday. The United States is sending Ukraine four medium-range precision-guided multiple-launch rocket systems that would be able to strike Russian troops from beyond the range of their artillery. (AP/Russian Defense Ministry Press Service)

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. and Germany pledged on Wednesday to equip Ukraine with some of the advanced weapons it has long desired for shooting down aircraft and knocking out artillery, as Russian forces closed in on capturing a key city in the east.

The U.S. unveiled a new $700 million package of sophisticated weapons for Ukraine in an urgent effort to prevent Russia from seizing the final swaths of land in the Donbas region. But the most advanced rocket systems will take at least three weeks to reach the battlefront, raising questions of whether they will arrive in time to stop Russia's slow but steady gains.

The Biden administration's decision to send four medium-range rocket systems came after weeks of debate over whether the precision-guided weapons would provoke a strong military reaction from Russian President Vladimir Putin. It suggested the U.S. believes it has zeroed in on what weapons deliveries are worth the risk.

"We don't have an interest in the conflict in Ukraine widening to a broader conflict or evolving into World War Three. So we've been mindful of that," said Colin Kahl, the defense undersecretary for policy. "But at the same time, Russia doesn't get a veto over what we send to the Ukrainians."

Still, Kahl and other U.S. officials said that Ukrainian leaders have promised they will use the rockets only to defend their nation.

"The Ukrainians have given us assurances that they will not use these systems against targets on Russian territory," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday. "There is a strong trust bond between Ukraine and the United States."

However, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Wednesday the U.S. is "deliberately and diligently pouring fuel on the fire." He added that Russia doesn't trust Kyiv's assurances that the multiple rocket launch systems supplied by the U.S. will not be used to attack.

"In order to trust [someone], you need to have experience with situations when such promises were kept. Regretfully, there is no such experience whatsoever," Peskov said.

The need to train Ukrainian troops on the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System system for about three weeks before they can go to battle raises concerns that Russia will have a window of time to capture key terrain in the east.

"It is a grinding fight," said Kahl. "We believe that these additional capabilities will arrive in a timeframe that's relevant and allow the Ukrainians to very precisely target the types of things they need for the current fight."

The Pentagon would not say how many rockets it will provide to Ukraine, only that it is sending four of the truck-mounted rocket systems. The trucks each carry a container with six precision-guided rockets, which can travel about 45 miles.

The expectation is that Ukraine can use the rockets in the Donbas, where they could both intercept Russian artillery and take out Russian positions in towns where fighting is intense, such as Sievierodonetsk.

The package announced Wednesday is the 11th approved so far and will be the first to tap the $40 billion in security and economic assistance recently passed by Congress. It includes a variety of weapons and equipment, ranging from helicopters, Javelin anti-tank weapon systems and radars to tactical vehicles, artillery rounds and spare parts.

The weapons will come from Pentagon drawdown authority, so would involve taking them from U.S. inventory. Kahl said the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems have already been sent to Europe, and officials said the training could begin this week.

Since the war began in February, the U.S. and its allies have tried to walk a narrow line: Send Ukraine weapons needed to fight off Russia but stop short of providing aid that will trigger a broader conflict that could spill into other parts of Europe.

Over time, however, the U.S. and allies have amped up the weaponry going to Ukraine, as the fight has shifted from Russia's campaign to take the capital, Kyiv, and other areas, to more close-contact skirmishes for small pieces of land in the east and south.

To that end, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been pleading with the West to send multiple-launch rocket systems as soon as possible to help stop Russia's destruction of towns in the Donbas.

The rockets have a longer range than the howitzer artillery systems that the U.S. has provided Ukraine. They would allow Ukrainian forces to strike Russian troops from a distance outside the range of Russia's artillery systems.

"We are fighting for Ukraine to be provided with all the weapons needed to change the nature of the fighting and start moving faster and more confidently toward the expulsion of the occupiers," Zelenskyy said in a recent address.

Ukraine needs multiple-launch rocket systems, said Philip Breedlove, a retired U.S. Air Force general who was NATO's top commander from 2013-16.

"We need to get serious about supplying this army so that it can do what the world is asking it to do: fight a world superpower alone on the battlefield," Breedlove said.

Russia has been making incremental progress in the Donbas, as it tries to take the remaining sections of the region not already controlled by Russian-backed separatists.

GERMANS' NEXT LEVEL

Chancellor Olaf Scholz took many Germans by surprise with his announcement Wednesday, made during a 50-minute budget speech, that he would send one of Germany's most modern weapons systems to Ukraine.

For weeks, the chancellor had been accused of dithering on the question of whether to provide heavy weapons for Ukraine. The German public had been growing increasingly restless that for all the announcements about military aid to Ukraine -- and a parliamentary vote backing deliveries a month ago -- no major weapons systems had actually arrived there.

Now, he was announcing that German would provide Ukraine not just with tracking radar to help the Ukrainian army locate sources of Russian heavy artillery but with the sophisticated IRIS-T air defense system.

Just before Scholz announced the new weapon deliveries, Friedrich Merz, the conservative opposition leader, criticized him for not following up on previous announcements.

"The critique comes from all sides: from inside the coalition, from the expert community, from public opinion left to right, from a significant swath of public opinion, and from most, but not all our allies," said Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, vice president of the Berlin office of the German Marshall Fund.

As Scholz himself put it in his speech to the parliament Wednesday, Russia's attack on Ukraine has forced "a massive change in politics" in Germany. It not only led to huge investment in Germany's armed forces, but also to weapons going directly to Ukraine within days of the invasion, in contradiction to a long-held government policy of not delivering weapons to active conflicts.

The change has been particularly jarring for Scholz's Social Democratic Party, which long saw itself as the party of peace and reconciliation, especially toward Russia. And Germany is a country where a culture of pacifism runs deep, shaped by Germany's past.

Questions of what the German army can actually supply have dominated the discussions.

Besides the air defense system and a weapons-tracking radar announced Wednesday, Germany is training Ukrainian soldiers on a modern mobile howitzer, the Panzerhaubitze 2000l. It plans to send a dozen, in cooperation with the Netherlands, in the next weeks.

Agnes-Marie Strack-Zimmermann, a Free Democrat who as head of the parliamentary defense committee has been publicly critical about Scholz's perceived sluggishness on providing weapons, said Wednesday that she was satisfied with the latest announcement.

She warned however, that the government should now be looking ahead to do more.

"It's in all of our interest to not be perceived internationally as the blocker," she said.

CITY ON BRINK

A regional governor said Russian forces now control 80% of Sievierodonetsk, a city that is key to Moscow's efforts to complete its capture of the Donbas, where Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists have fought for years and where the separatists held swaths of territory even before the invasion.

Luhansk Gov. Serhiy Haidai said Russian troops were advancing in the city during fierce street battles with Ukrainian forces, though he noted that in some districts the Ukrainian troops managed to push them back.

The only other city in Luhansk that the Russians have not yet captured, Lysychansk, is still fully under Ukrainian control, he said, but is likely to be the next target. The two cities are separated by a river.

"If the Russians manage to take full control over Sievierodonetsk within two to three days, they will start installing artillery and mortars and will shell Lysychansk more intensively," Haidai said.

Zelenskyy, meanwhile, said the country is losing between 60 and 100 soldiers a day in the fighting.

He turned the focus to children in his nightly video address, saying 243 of them have been killed in the war, 446 have been wounded and 139 are missing. The real numbers could be higher, he added, as his government doesn't have a full picture of areas under Russian occupation.

Zelenskyy also said 200,000 children are among the Ukrainians who have been forcefully taken to Russia and dispersed across that vast country: "The purpose of this criminal policy is not just to steal people but to make those who are deported forget about Ukraine and unable to return."

In southern Ukraine, a regional governor sounded a more positive note, saying Russian troops were retreating and blowing up bridges behind them.

"They are afraid of a counterattack by the Ukrainian army," Vitaliy Kim, governor of the Mykolayiv region, said on the Telegram messaging app.

Information for this article was contributed by Lolita C. Baldor, Ben Fox, Matthew Lee, Aamer Madhani, Sagar Meghani, John Leicester, Frank Jordans, Yuras Karmanau and Jill Lawless of The Associated Press and by Christopher F. Schuetze of The New York Times.

  photo  FILE - A man walks next to heavily damaged buildings and destroyed cars following Russian attacks in Bakhmut, Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine, Tuesday, May 24, 2022. The region, along with neighboring Luhansk, is part of the Donbas, where Russian forces have focused their offensive. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco, File)
 
 
  photo  FILE - President Joe Biden speaks in the Oval Office of the White House, Tuesday, May 31, 2022, in Washington. The Biden administration is expected to announce it will send Ukraine a small number of high-tech, medium range rocket systems, a critical weapon that Ukrainian leaders have been begging for as they struggle to stall Russian progress in the Donbas, U.S. officials said Tuesday. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
 
 


  photo  Ukrainian armored vehicles deploy soldiers under cover of a tree line Wednesday near the front lines in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. Russian and Ukrainian troops traded heavy artillery fire around Sievierodonetsk amid street battles in the strategic town. More photos at arkansasonline.com/ukrainemonth4/. (The New York Times/Finbarr O’Reilly)
 
 


  photo  A medic takes a break from treating wounded soldiers Wednesday in Kramatorsk, Ukraine. President Voldymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine is losing 60 to 100 soldiers a day. (The New York Times/Ivor Prickett)
 
 



 Gallery: Images from Ukraine, month 4



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